


Not of This World

by Domoz



Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: But a suprisingly close guess to how stopping the eldrazi worked, Invalidated by Canon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-05 14:11:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5378144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Domoz/pseuds/Domoz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ral Zarek is given a new (awful, annoying) job after his failure on Project Lighting Bug, Jace goes home after Zendikar is saved.</p><p>And the two of them get a visit from the thing they least expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The rain over the Tenth today was only a light drizzle, which annoyed Ral Zarek far more than it rightfully should. His mood , at the moment, called for a proper storm and as far as he was concerned the sky should follow suit without him having to call one.

 

That damn dragon was at it again; ever since this whole living Guildpact thing started, Niv Mizzet had been trying to, in his words, “foster better guild relationships.”

He had decided to make something he called the _Izzet's Inter-guild Outreach Branch_ to try and… What was it he had said? “Improve the public's view of the Izzet”? Since when had they ever cared about the public's view?

And who, out of everyone in the entire guild, was the worst person for the job? Who wanted it the least? Who had been appointed head of the project _anyways_ despite all of his complaints and arguments to the contrary?

 

Why him, of course. _Head Inter-Guild Correspondent Zarek._ It made him want to spit.

 

Niv Mizzet had claimed that after the closure of Project Lighting-Bug, he should have the time to do this, and that after all, as the former Izzet maze-runner, he was the most well known, most _capable_ of doing the job.

  


It was almost certainly the dragon's idea of punishment.

  


Who better than to go over to the Azorius and fill out backlogs of requested paperwork? Oh no, he didn't have _anything_ better to do with his time. Except, you know, _literally anything else._

The sound of thunder that trailed to the embassy of the Guildpact had nothing to do with the clouds above.

 

-

Entirely elsewhere, and oblivious to Zarek's ire, the people of Zendikar were slowly but surely beginning to rebuild.

Ulamog and Kozilek were gone, and their spawn with them. Their corruption remained, but with the the monsters absent the plane could start to recover. The things the Eldrazi destroyed could be rebuilt.

 

 _Well, theoretically,_ Jace mused, looking from his perch in the lighthouse out over the dusty ruins that once were Sea Gate. True enough, reconstruction had already started; those from the army who had stayed - and that was most of them – had begun to clear the streets of rubble and put up scaffolding around buildings.

 

But with the Eldrazi spawn gone the old predators of Zendikar had come back in full force, and caused constant disruption to the survivors. He watched a group of survivors converge at a break in the wall in an attempt to drive off a geopede.

 

Still, compared to what it had been like just a few days ago, being attacked by a Baloth was far preferable.

Things were really, finally getting better. And yet…

 

He turned to glance back at Gideon, who was going over some plans with one of his former generals on rebuilding the walls and sending out hunting parties. Was he concerned, too?

 

There had been three titans, and they had only dealt with two. Emrakul was still absent, and had in fact, never appeared. He had asked Nissa, who  had reached her soul into the earth and searched… And then proclaimed happily that there was no trace of the Eldrazi left. Zendikar was really free.

Which meant that somewhere out there, some other plane was likely being destroyed. And they had no idea _where._

 

It was very troubling, but with no information, they had no way to help. There was a gust of wind that billowed his cloak up around him; it smelled of salt and Eldrazi corruption, and made Jade shiver despite himself.

 

Well, there was nothing they could do for now; he had concerns elsewhere. He turned and walked back into the lighthouse, where the conversation seemed more or less done. Gideon stood up from the table and stretched - he looked as well rested as he had since… Well, since as long as Jace had known him.

 

“Gideon.”

Gideon looked over at him with an easy smile. “Jace. You've been looking over the reconstruction, I take it?”

 

Despite his worry, Jace couldn't help but smile back. It was almost frustrating how sincere Gideon could be.

“I have. It's... Been going well.”

 

Gideon raised an eyebrow at that. “You sound unsure. I don't suppose you have some knowledge of architecture hiding in that head of yours, do you?”

Jace waved a hand dismissively. “Plenty, but nothing really immediately useful here. I-” He paused to bite his lip. “As fun as this has been, I'm not really much use here any longer. I need to go back home. To Ravnica.”

 

Gideon's look changed to surprise, and then to understanding. “That's perfectly fair. And given your status as the Guildpact, I think you may have been gone too long already.”

 

Jace sighed. “Probably. I don't suppose you'll be going back any time soon?”

Gideon considered this for a moment with a serious expression, and then he nodded, “I was planning on checking in myself. No doubt I've been missed by now.”

Jace smiled again. “Stop by when you do. And maybe don't collapse on the steps, this time.”

  


Before Gideon could respond he reached for the blind eternities, for Ravnica, and he Walked back home.

  


-

  


It could be worse, he had to remind himself. At least he had let people know he was leaving before he went. That had probably at least _halved_ the paperwork he was dealing with now. And yet...

 

Lavinia brought in another stack of papers and added it to the growing pile.

 

“Is it _really_ necessary,” he whined as she steadied the stack, “That I sign off on _every_ tiny dispute? Surely no one will ever need a record of some Guildmage complaining about the price of _cucumber seeds.”_

Lavina leaned over the desk and gave him a severe look. “You know it's important, Guildpact. All of those little complaints are kept on file for later, in case something comes up. And need I remind you that you have several meetings today as well. You need to catch up as quickly as possible.”

 

Jace sighed and rubbed his eyes. He'd been doing that a lot lately. “I know, I know. I just need a break.”

“Well that's the price you pay for leaving without explanation for three weeks.”

 

Ah. She was still annoyed at that. Understandably so, given that Lavinia had probably been saddled with even more paperwork than he was dealing with now, in his absence.

Still.

“I'm just looking for a little sympathy, is all.”

 

It was Lavinia's turn to sigh now.

“I'll see about getting you some coffee,” she said, apparently repenting a bit. “in the meantime, you should prepare yourself for a meeting with someone from the Izzet. Apparently they're coming in with a... Rather sizable backlog of complaints.”

 

That took him a moment to register.

“Complaints... About them? Or from?”

“From, apparently. Why they've decided to bring this up now, when they avoided the forum at all costs before is beyond me. Hopefully most of what's brought in will be so… _Izzet_ that it can be immediately dismissed.”

He understood the tone in her voice immediately. By _Izzet,_ she of course meant _ridiculous_ and _outside the realm of law_. She meant that she didn't want to deal with it.

 

“We can only hope.”

  


Lavinia just made a wordless noise of agreement as she left on her quest for coffee.

  


Well, that meeting sounded _interesting,_ at least.

  


Jace shook his head and tried to focus as best he could on the papers in front of him. It seemed that quite a lot of them were reports on some Simic creations running amok, which was concerning, but his focus was mostly on other places. He'd have to find some time to go back to Zendikar. He really wanted to check and make sure Nissa hadn't found something about the last titan - it couldn't have just left, could it? Not without leaving some hint as to where it had gone.

He wouldn’t go too soon, though. He didn't want people to get any more suspicious of him than they already were; if something truly dire happened, surely Gideon would come find him.

 

He smiled at Lavinia as she set a mug of coffee next to him, and kept on signing papers.

 

The meeting with the Izzet should be a good distraction from all of these – wow there were a _lot_ of complaints about the Simic. He was tempted to ask Lavinia for more details when she cleared her throat.

“It should be about time. I assume that you're ready?”

“As ready as I'll ever be.”

 

She left the room, and a few moments later came back leading a very, very disgruntled looking Ral Zarek.

That was the first surprise. The second was the not one, but _three_ bags filled with papers that he dumped on top of Jace's desk.

 

“ _You're_ the one the Izzet sent for this?”

 

Ral gave an annoyed grunt, but otherwise didn't respond. He was apparently so annoyed that even the combination of his own dampening equipment and the wards on the building itself wasn't enough to stop a few sparks from flying off of his gauntlet.

 

Jace shook his head and reached into the bag. The first thing he saw: “ _Head Inter-Guild Correspondent Zarek?”_

“Don't you dare laugh. I'm not any happier  about this than you are.”

“Why you, of all people? You'd hardly be _my_ first choice for _inter-guild relations.”_

 

Ral growled. “I can be plenty friendly when I want to be. But if you must know, I'm being punished.”

 

Jace scoffed and looked through some more of the papers. Territory disputes, dismissals of damage claims...

 

“Look,” said Ral, “I don't actually care if you read any of that or not. The important thing is that you confirm to Mizzet that I brought it all here.”

 

... A lot of dismissals of damage claims...

 

“What's the point, then? Why bring this all in if you don't care if this actually gets dealt with?”

 

“I don't _know_ , ask the damn dragon!” Ral was so agitated at this point that he had to arc the extra energy he was producing from one hand to the other to keep from scorching the carpet and getting himself responsible for yet more paperwork. “Point is, I want the lizard off of my back. You can let him know I was here so I can get back to my research, yeah?”

  


“Well... yes.” Jace slowly looked up at Lavinia, who was very pointedly looking away “And no. Technically now that the Izzet have someone in charge of taking complaints you have, uh, some obligation here. And quite a large backlog to deal with.”

 

Jace prepared to duck away from the impending lightning-bolt as Ral tensed up, but it didn't strike quite yet.

 

“Oh no”, said Ral, “No, no. You are not telling me that I have to come back here and sit in your damn meetings about how much property damage we're responsible for. I'm not doing it!”

His volume rose as he spoke - as did the amount of lightning and wind. The room was practically a storm in it's own right, at this point.

 

 

“It's... Not as bad as it sounds.” Jace tried to look as apologetic as he possibly could. He really did feel bad for Ral. “We can try and delay them if you want-”

 

“Whatever,”Ral snarled. “Lock me in a room with a bunch of Gruul Ragebeasts, for all I care. No, actually, at this point that would probably be better!”

  


“On that note,” said Lavinia, smoothy intervening, “there is the usual representative from the clans waiting outside as well. Come with me, Zarek; we can work out scheduling.”

She reached for his shoulder, but he jerked away and stalked out of the room. Jace gave her a sympathetic look before she followed him out.

 

Jace looked around the ruined room, and to the stacks of paper that had been blown onto the ground.

Well, so much for going back to Zendikar any time soon. Hopefully nothing happened there.

 

He heard the sound of thunder from somewhere down the hallway.

  


Hopefully nothing happened _here._

-

  
  


Ral could not begin to even pretend to care about anything anyone was talking about here.

 

He supposed he _could_ count himself lucky. A lot of the complaints that happened from before the completion of the implicit maze had to be dismissed just from the lack of paperwork filed about them. But that didn't make the fact that he had to sit in a room with some old Orzhov asshole and Jace Beleren _now_ any better.

As it were, he was distracting himself from a conversation about smashed stained-glass windows by scribbling down as many of the basic dimensional equations he could remember off hand. Then, once he finished that, all of the complicated ones. It was preferable to listening to this asshole drone on all day, even if it wasn't particularly useful.

 

On second thought, given some of the new research he was working on... Perhaps if he wrote Grixt's time equation in terms of the one for harmonic equilibrium...

It was very obvious now that he wasn't even listening, and yet the Orzov dignitary droned on. And then-

_\- What are you working on?_

He managed to not send sparks flying everywhere, but he did glare up at Jace, who, to his credit, looked totally engrossed in the monotone droll.

 

_-Damn it Beleren. How many times do I have to warn you not to mess around in my mind?_

 

 _-I'm not messing around!_ Somehow Jace sounded indignant even through telepathy. _I just opened a line of communication. I can tell you're not at all interested._

 

Ral snorted, making the opulently dressed Orzohv pause for a moment.

 

 

_-I'm not. I take it that you aren't a fan of these meetings either?_

 

 

_-Not so much, no._

  


Before Ral could respond to that, the door to the room burst open and a young and panicked looking Arrester stumbled in.

“There's been an attack! The Simic-”

 

The Ohrzov man jumped up in panic. “An assassination attempt?”

Lavinia followed in closely after. “No, not as such. However, it would still be safest to evacuate to somewhere safer. Come with me.”

 

Before he could register all of that, Ral was being shuffled along the hallways of New Prav by a bunch of Arresters, along with the Orsov and the Guildpact.

“Based on the nature of the beast,” Lavinia said, “it's probably best to just hide underground until it gets dealt with.”

  


Ah, so the archives then? Ral couldn't say he'd ever really _wanted_ to go down there, but now that he was being given the chance he certainly wasn't going to say no.

They were corralled out into the courtyard, to cross from the halls into the tower basement. The walls were high here, but the creature was far too large to be concealed by any building.

 

It looked something like a huge mushroom, but made of garish pink and blue tentacles. And it was _massive_ \- far bigger than any of the buildings of Ravnica. It seemed to just drift aimlessly through the air, tentacles lashing out at air and building alike. Where it touched stone; the structure disintegrated into clouds of dust.

Ral didn't know exactly how to feel about what he was looking at right now.

 

“Damn,” he laughed, a bit too nervously to even his own ears. “Where have they been hiding that thing?”

The Orzhov man looked like he was about to collapse from terror. Ral let his eyes slip over to Jace, too, to see his reaction.

 

The Guildpact had gone totally pale and stiff at the sight of this thing.

Lavinia was reaching for his shoulder when Jace opened his mouth, voice cracking, “I... I need to go.”

 

He moved so unexpectedly that the the guards around made no move to stop him. He easily broke through the protective circle and moved quickly around the side of a building and out of sight.

Lavinia reacted first, running to the corner - and then stopping. Ral followed behind a moment later out of his own curiosity.

 

“An invisibility spell? Really Jace?” Lavinia sounded strained. “Jace!”

 

Ral felt it before he even rounded the corner. There was no invisibility spell - Jace had Planeswalked away, he could feel the ripple of the Blind Eternities from where he had left.

 

This confused Ral a great deal. Was he really so scared of that thing that his first instinct was to flee to another plane? Or - he paused to look up the titan - perhaps there was something more to that thing that Jace hadn't shared?

 

Ral watched the huge mass of oddly angled tentacles drift slowly but inexorably closer and swallowed hard.

 

 _Please, for the love of rains,_ he thought, _let the Guildpact be a coward._

  


 

 


	2. Chapter 2

The trip back to Zendikar was a quick but rough one, no doubt made worse by Jace's own panic.

  
  


He was lucky enough to land just outside of the walls of Sea Gate, on ground uneven enough that he stumbled and very nearly fell on arrival.

  
  


He shook his head to try and clear the panic. Gideon. Gideon had lead the troops here. He would surely have the best idea of what to do, and they would need Nissa and her connection to the land. Hopefully they were still nearby.

  
  


Jace looked around to get his bearings. He was outside the wall, but very near to one of its many collapsed sections. In fact it seemed that the guards that had been assigned to this section had noticed him and started to approach.It looked to be a motley crew of goblins and elves; he could already hear the loud murmurings of, “Ain't that the mind mage?” and, “How did he get out here?”

  
  


Well, at least they recognized him.

  
  


He brushed off his cloak and tried to steady his breathing.

  
  


Every moment he spent here was another building destroyed, another one hundred, maybe a thousand people dead. No pressure.

  
  


Despite their apparent recognition of him, the guards still had their hands on their blades. One of the elves stepped forward. “Jace Beleren? We heard you had left.”

  
  


Jace nodded, voice hoarse. “I did, but I'm back. I need to talk to Gideon.”

  
  


The panic is his voice seemed to be enough to convince them to let him though, though not without a glance between them. “He's in the lighthouse,”said one of the elves. “I'm sure you know where.”

  
  


He nodded and pushed past them, scrabbling through the gap in the wall and very nearly running through the streets, pausing only to skirt around piles of debris. He was panting by the time he reached the top room of the lighthouse and found Gideon talking to two of his generals, saying something about what to do with the Roilmages now that the roil was gone. The conversation paused as Jace burst through the doorway.

  
  


“ Gideon I- need your help. And where's Nissa? We-  _ shit-”  _ Gideon whipped around, surral already at the ready. At least his battle reflexes had stayed sharp. They would need that.

  
  


“ _ Jace? _ ”  Gideon straightened out and put his hands on Jace's shoulders, “Steady, now. I want to help, just tell me what's wrong.”

  
  


Jace swallowed hard. There was really only one way to put this.

  
  


“I found the last titan.”

  
  


Gideon was never terribly good at hiding his emotions, and Jace watched as surprise, then anger passed over his face.

  
  


''Where? We can-”

  
  


“Ravnica.”

  
  


That stopped Gideon cold.

  
  


There was a long moment of silence until one of the commanders – Tazri, if Jace remembered correctly- spoke up. “ _ Where _ ? Gideon if you're thinking of going after that-”

  
  


“ It's not here, Tazri. It's… Elsewhere.” Gideon let out a long sigh.  “ _ Damn,  _ I knew I'd been away for too long.”

  
  


He looked back at the two of them. Tazri looked unhappy, but the other one, Munda, was already chuckling and shaking his head at her.

  
  


“Well, what are you waiting for then? Go help the poor lad. We can handle ourselves out here and it's no good for another world to suffer like ours has. Not if you can stop it.”

  
  


Gideon nodded at solemnly. “He's right. Let's go Jace”

  
  


Jace had only just managed to catch his breath. “No- not yet, wait. We need Nissa. This only worked because of her connection to the leylines. And Chandra. And… Anyone else.”

  
  


Gideon frowned. “Nissa went off into the wilderness a few days ago. Something about rehabilitating the land. And Chandra has already gone home. Even the merfolk girl is gone, and you're the only one who's seen the dragon. I don't think we're going to have a lot of luck.”

  
  


Jace sighed. Without Nissa to help, he wasn't sure how much success they'd have. But they didn't have any time to look for her, either. Gideon would have to be enough.

  
  


“That's... That's fair enough. We don't have time to waste.”

  
  


Gideon nodded and turned to Munda. “Then we're going. Try and get a message out to Nissa, if you can. Tell her to come to Ravnica. To...  _ Another place _ . She should understand.”

Munda nodded in return and Tazri, to her credit, seemed to be lightening up at the realization that Gideon was going to be leaving.

  
  


“Well then,” said Gideon, casting a meaningful look at Jace, “Let's go.''

  
  


Gideon Walked, and Jace Walked a moment after.

  
  


In the chaos of it all, they were unlucky enough to Walk into the edge of Gruul Territory, where the buildings met the wastes. Somewhere far enough away from the titan where it was only just visible over the roofs of the buildings.

  
  


Gideon sighed. “I should back to the Boros and help them organize. You should probably be busy doing Guildpact things. I imagine there's something of a panic going on right now. You know where to find me.”

  
  


Jace nodded. “With the legion. And if you happen to find someone who's a lithomancer, be sure to let me know. There has to be  _ one _ in this city.”

  
  


Gideon smiled grimly. “We can only hope.”

-

  
  


The first hours of the disaster go terribly. There was a big, building-eating horror in the streets, the Guildpact had just  _ disappeared, _ and already the guilds had found a way to squabble and blame each other over it. And Lavinia was stuck in a room try to get them and do something about it.

  
  


Most of those who had come to meet and discuss the issue of the monster were old maze-runners, or at least Lavinia was able to recognize most of them. Emmara was there, looking worried, as was Ral Zarek, who was somehow producing even more electricity than he was the last time she had seen him. And those two were hardly her biggest worries in the room.

  
  


“Of course it’s your fault, ”spat the Boros Guildmage. Tajic himself was absent, it seemed. “What other guild could be responsible for an abomination like this?”

  
  


Vorel, from the Simic, was obviously having to try very hard to keep calm. “I tell you again that we had  _ nothing _ to do with it. Even if it was done using Simic methods, it was done outside of our knowledge. We're as dedicated to stopping that thing as you are! It's already destroyed one of our most important labs-”

  
  


“Lab! There are people's lives at stake here!”

  
  


Well, it could be worse. The Gruul and the Rakdos hadn't sent anybody to make this meeting any more of a nightmare than it already was, and if the Dimir were present they hadn't made themselves known. Lavinia put her fingers to her temples all the same.

  
  


She had already had more than enough of all this rabble. “Quiet! We're not here to point fingers. We're here to deal with the problem. I'm open to ideas.”

  
  


The arguments fell silent at that, although there was still the quiet  _ buzz buzz zap  _ of the sparks that were flying between Ral's fingers.

  
  


Teysa at least gave her a look that she might interpret as sympathetic, but no one spoke up.

Lavinia sighed. “While it's easy to track the movements of the big one, the real issue is all of the small ones that come with it.”

  
  


She paused and gave a meaningful look to the Boros Guildmage, whose face flushed a deep red.

“ Our forces weren't prepared for…  _ Anything _ on this scale. We're organizing as quickly as we can, but we were already spread thin when this started.”

  
  


There was moment of quiet, and then Teysa spoke. “I'm not certain how much fighting this thing will help. The Obzedat have been looking into this thing and it seems the small ones are all but endless, as long as the big one is around.”

  
  


She shook her head, the unspoken  _ and we're not even sure it can be killed _ hanging in the air.

  
  


An unusual look crossed Ral’s face and it seemed as if he was about to speak, but before he could, Vorel spoke again.

  
  


“ We  _ can _ help. Our troops may not be traditional, but-”

  
  


“ Your  _ help _ is what caused this mess!”

  
  


And just like that, the room was taken by more squabbling. It was all Lavinia could do not to turn and leave the room.

  
  


The Guildpact had left  _ her  _ in charge of getting the guilds to work together. Even in a time of crisis, that idea was doomed from the start. She could be out there actually _ helping someone- _

  
  


There was another voice from behind her. “Stop it. S _ top it! _ This isn't anyone's fault.”

Lavinia was both very relieved and very angry to hear that voice.

  
  


“So, Guildpact. You finally return.”

  
  


She turned in her chair to see a sheepish Jace.

  
  


“Sorry,” he said. “I had to go, uh. Get help for dealing with the… Thing”

  
  


Lavinia frowned, but was Teysa who spoke up. “So you know that it is, then?.”

  
  


Jace nodded and took a deep breath. “It's called an Eldrazi, and it's complicated.”

  
  


–

  
  


The Boros were at least  _ marginally  _ more organized than the people of Zendikar had been. Gideon had to stifle a sigh as he got to the gates of Sunhome. The grounds were a mess of grunts and Wojecks running about, trying to organize as best they could with the Guildmages presumably all gone to get orders from the Angels. They didn't seem to have any idea what they were in for.

  
  


Well, no good was going to get done waiting around here. This wasn't like Zendikar, where there was a city to retake. This time there was one to defend.

  
  


Gideon cleared his throat. “Eyes front soldiers. Listen up”

  
  


Most of them immediately fell into line at at the sound of someone who seemed to know what they were doing. Some of them even remembered him, getting the others to fall with hushed whispers of, “That's commander Gideon. He's spoken to Aurellia herself.”

  
  


The goblins stumbled into groups, and the spear-wielding Wojecks formed into lines behind them.

Gideon knew he was going to get into trouble for this with the Angels, but there wasn't time to worry about their wrath right now.

  
  


“These monsters you've heard about; they don't get tired, and they don't ever stop coming,” he said. Our number one priority right now should be stopping them for long enough for people to evacuate. Are we clear?”

  
  


They shouted back in unison, “Crystal clear!”

  
  


“Then follow me.”

  
  


Gideon led them through the streets, not directly towards the titan, but on an angle to the district it was heading towards. They wouldn't have a barricade to hold the spawn back, so it would have to just be them.

  
  


He planned to be on the front lines.

  
  


Most of the legion members hadn't seen one of the Eldrazi spawn before, so when they came across a wandering one on the street, the first instinct of most of the soldiers was to panic. Even for Gideon, this was distinctly different from what he was used to fighting. It had tentacles, like the spawn of Ulamog, but bent at right angles and tipped with claws; where he might expect a bony plate, there was instead a spongy lattice of flesh.

  
  


This one seemed small, at least, and moved slowly by waddling from one appendage to the other.

Gideon yelled, “Hold Fast!” and whipped out his surral, slicing down and cutting off a sizable chunk of what, in any other creature, would be it's face. The Eldrazi made no noise, but instead charged at him. He easily dodged its slow assault, but it moved past him and into a group of panicking soldiers. He came down with his surral again as a group of them finally moved to skewer the thing with spears. The Eldrazi was torn to shreds, and stopped moving with a shudder.

  
  


Gideon wiped some ichor off of his armor and looked at the troops. Most of them were staring at either him or the corpse with some form of awe, though some of the goblin squad members had ripped off loose tentacles and started squabbling among themselves for them.

  
  


Well, even across planes it seems that some things didn't change.

  
  


“That,” he yelled, “is an Eldrazi. And there are going to be a lot more where that came from.”

  
  


-

  
  


Jace explained it to them like this: An Eldrazi was an ancient monster, older than even the guilds. Its appearance was not the fault of any of them, but just a case of terribly bad luck. He told them that this thing, if left to its own devices, would consume everything: buildings, people... Not even the ghosts were safe if they didn't stop it.

  
  


He conveniently left out the part where they came from outside the plane, and where he had dealt with them on Zendikar. The guild representatives listened to his explanation in tense silence. It seemed unbelievable, but then so did the monster itself.

  
  


Vorel chewed his lip uncertainly, happy to have the blame off of his guild but still not believing what he was hearing. “Not to cast doubt on the Guildpact, but how could you possibly know these things?”

  
  


Jace gaped for a moment, trying to come up with a good enough half-truth. Ral Zarek, who it seemed already knew the truth of where Jace had been, shot him a look from across the room as if to say, “ _ Don't you dare.”  _ He didn't  _ want  _ to dare, but if they were going to solve the problem, the people of Ravnica needed as much information as possible.

  
  


He settled on, “I...I helped deal with something like this before.”

  
  


Lavinia shook her head, “Not something I've ever been aware of, and I'm sure we would have noticed if another  _ Eldrazi _ was roaming around.''

  
  


Oh, lovely. Now Lavinia was suspicious of him, too. 

  
  


“It… Was taken care of before it came to the public eye.”

  
  


Still not technically a lie. They  _ had _ taken care of the other two titans before anyone of Ravnica had heard of them.

  
  


She sighed, but it had a tinge of relief. “Then they  _ can  _ be dealt with. How did you do it before?”

  
  


“Well, it's… Another complicated answer. But most importantly, we're going to need a lithomancer, preferably more than one, if we can find them.”

  
  


“Rocks?” The Golgari representative finally spoke up. “You expect this problem to be solved with fancy carved rocks?”

  
  


Hedrons and leylines had worked before. But that was on Zendikar, and this was Ravnica. The mana was so different that there was no guarantee of the results even being similar.

  
  


Well, he'd figure something out.

  
  


Jace nodded solemnly. “Rocks and leylines can be used to trap it at the very least. And we can figure out what to do from there. I can explain the technical details to those that are actually making them. For the time being, we need to minimize the damage.”

  
  


“That,” the Boros Guildmage said, “I think we can agree on.”

  
  


Jace nodded. “Then get back to your guilds and see to it, then. If you find a lithomancer, send them to me, but in the meantime I have something else to arrange.”

  
  


He turned to leave as the guild representatives started to leave themselves, but before he made it too far, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  
  


He turned, half expecting it to be Emmara, but instead found Ral Zarek standing behind him with a serious expression on his face.

  
“ I think,” he said, his voice quiet but intense, “that you ought to tell me the  _ proper  _ story. Now.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SNOOT DID IT AGAIN


	3. Chapter 3

Ral Zarek was, to put it very lightly, unhappy. If the things Jace was telling him were true, then his home was going to be eaten thanks to some unlucky fluke of nature.

  
  


“They eat _planes?”_ he whispered, far too loudly for the conversation to be considered entirely secret. Jace sighed and started weaving a spell to keep others from hearing as they walked.

  
  


“They eat _everything._ Which includes people. And buildings. And mana. So yes.”

  
  


“How did it get _here?”_

  
  


Ral’s voice was nowhere near a whisper anymore, and Jace could feel the static on his skin from the storm mage's anger.

  
  


“I… Don't know,” Jace admitted. “We took care of two of the titans back on Zendikar. We knew there was another, but we didn't know where it had gone. The only thing that seems to motivate them is food... And I guess they found plenty of it here.”

  
  


Ral wanted to throw all sorts of accusations - maybe Jace himself had somehow led the titan here - but Jace looked, for a moment, very sad and exhausted.

  
  


Far be it from Ral to take pity on him for that - he told himself that he had more pressing questions he wanted answered; the insults could wait.

  
  


So instead of cursing at the Guildpact, Ral shook his head. “If you stopped two, you should be able to stop one more. The hedrons and the leylines… They’re a decent start, but that plan has issues, too. First and foremost is that you're going to have a real problem finding a decent lithomancer.” Despite everything, Ral swelled with something like pride. “I don't know where you were doing this before, but Ravnica is a whole different beast.”

  
  


Jace sounded almost defeated. “I know. But we've got to start somewhere. I'm working with what I know.”

  
  


“ _Well_ then,” said Ral, “share what you know. Show me one of those damn hedrons and then let _me_ work with what _I_ know.”

  
  


Jace's eyes darted off to the side, but after a moment he conjured up the illusion of a miniature hedron in his hand.

Ral gave it a curious look-over, apparently already considering his own ideas.

  
  


“Alright,” he said, “it's a start.”

-

  
  


The land was finally at peace.

  
  


Nissa could feel it in her heart as she rode with Ashaya through the wilds. The roil was over, the knot of darkness - that poison she had had let free onto the land - was finally gone. The wounds that the Eldrazi had caused could finally begin to heal.

  
  


Together, she and Ashaya had followed a trail of corruption up the coast, away from Sea Gate and to the ruins of what once was a small village. She was pleased to see that there were already people in the village beginning to rebuild - some people from the remains of Gideon's army, it looked like.

  
  


She couldn't help but smile at the wonder on their faces as she and Ashaya passed.

  
  


But they weren't what she was here for. The worst of the corruption lay on the other side of the village. Ashaya carried her to the edge of the waste and set her down, stirring up the bone white dust that continued on in this direction for miles. Nissa planted her feet in the ground, closing her eyes and reaching her consciousness into the earth.

  
  


She reached for the leylines, for the severed edges that the Eldrazi had destroyed, and very carefully began to pull them back together. Zendikar _wanted_ to heal, and it would, in time. She was just speeding up the process.

  
  


She lost herself in the earth, in Ashaya, in soothing the wounds of her home plane-

And when she opened her eyes again, it was to see the setting sun, and a Kor in soldier's garb.

  
  


He was standing some ways away and shifting nervously from foot to foot.

  
  


“Um,” he said, “Miss? You're Nissa, right?”

  
  


It took her a long moment to pull herself away from Zendikar, and she knew the Kor could see her shiver as she did.

“Mmm. Yes, that's me.”

  
  


“Er,” the kor cleared his throat. “Commander Gideon has been looking for you. I, uh, don't know the details, but apparently there are more Eldrazi?”

  
  


Nissa felt her heart freeze. More Eldrazi? That couldn't be possible; she had searched for even a tiny trace of them and found nothing. They were gone!

  
  


The soldier was obviously perturbed by her reaction.

  
  


“Um,” he struggled for words, “Not here. But I don't know where. They need you back at Sea Gate.”

  
  


Nissa looked up at Ashaya, a knot still in her stomach. She couldn't feel the Eldrazi, but after everything they had been through, she trusted Gideon. She nodded at the elemental as it reached down to pick her up, but before she stepped on her friend's hand she remembered the Kor nervously watching her.

  
  


“I… I'll be one my way back to them. Be careful out there.”

  
  


The soldier watched in awe as Ashaya placed Nissa on its shoulder and began heading back towards Sea Gate.

  
  


-

  
  


The closer they got to the titan, the less organized the troops became.

  
  


Gideon was, at this point, used to dealing with soldiers that weren't terribly disciplined, but by the time he had gotten there the people of Zendikar didn't panic on seeing an Eldrazi. They had either learned to run, or to fight, and either of those options was preferable to what many of these soldiers were doing.

  
  


They were bringing as much harm to themselves as the Eldrazi were.

  
  


It was frustrating. This was something the Boros should excel at, but the sheer strangeness of their foe was causing them to fail in unexpected ways. This wasn't like Zendikar, where he was still learning to lead. All he could really hope for here was for the troops to get acclimated to the enemy - and fast.

  
  


He led the troops around the edge of the swarm, helping them beat back the spawn that would break off to attack them. He planned to lead them into a more defensible position, to the walls of a Selesnyan Guild branch, where they could lead and fend off the Eldrazi and let the people evacuate.

  
  


They only made it a quarter of the way there before they saw the spell - a bright flare of white in the sky, the sign of a unit of Boros soldiers in trouble. He hesitated for a moment, and his troops hesitated behind him. The signal had come from quite a ways deeper into the territory that the Eldrazi had claimed.

  
  


Gideon looked back at the faces of the soldiers behind him. Despite their fear, they wanted to go help their guildmates.

  
  


He tried not to show his indecision. He didn't want to leave those in trouble any more than they did, but bringing a group that was this unprepared into the thick of the swarm was not high on the list of good ideas. Then he saw a young Wojek bite her lip and reach for her sword with a look of anger and worry, and decided that, good idea be damned, they had come here to save people. They might as well _try._

  
  


“Change of plans. We're going for our own, to the flare. Stay behind me, and let’s go!”

  
  


The “yes, sir!” he got back was more enthusiastic than he expected.

  
  


They still weren't used to fighting these things, but most of the soldiers had a newfound determination to save their guildmates. Their friends. Gideon himself tried to keep too many spawn from getting them to begin with by standing in front and taking the brunt of the attacks with bands of gold rippling down his body, protecting him from harm.

  
  


The streets were narrow enough that he was actually able to direct the fight alone fairly well, though it was tiring, and there was more than one alarming moment when a spawn would lurch out of an alleyway and flank them. The fight up the streets was not without injury, but most of the spawn they encountered were small – still just scouts on the edge of the swarm.

  
  


Then they turned a corner and saw it. There were the Boros, huddled in a defensive position on the roof of an apartment... And there was the Eldrazi - a large one - slowly climbing the building. Dust trailed off the places where its tentacles touched.

  
  


There were smaller spawn, too, crawling after it. It seemed that the soldiers on the roof were the only things around to draw the Eldrazi's interest. Hopefully, everyone else that was here had already gotten out. Gideon didn't want to think of the alternative.

  
  


He immediately whipped his surral out, neatly cleaving one of the smaller spawn into chunks and revealing an open hole in the wall where the door once was. He pointed at it, and in the same gesture brought his surral down, cutting down another spawn.

  
  


“There!” he shouted, “Reinforce them on the roof, and try and keep a way out!”

  
  


He didn't follow suit when the Boros behind him let out a battle cry. He knew that the Eldrazi wouldn't hear it. He just ran forward, letting his hieromancy protect him as he flicked his surral out to open the doorway even more for the soldiers behind him.

  
  


The building itself was thankfully empty; the spawn were either uninterested, or were unable to enter. It was a quick run up the stairs to the roof. Gideon burst out first, just in time to see the top of the large Eldrazi crest the roof of the building.

  
  


“Get back!” he shouted. “Stay together, and go back the way you came!”

  
  


But Gideon did not follow his own advice. Instead, he ran forward, trying to distract the Eldrazi that was making its way on to the roof. He knew he could cut away all he liked and the thing would keep coming. His goal was only to hold it back while the routed troops escaped. He cut off the tentacles as they came for him, but the Eldrazi managed to snake  a few tentacles behind him, wrapping his wrist and neck. He could only hold out for so long, even with his hieromancy.

  
  


He was pinned, arms straining against the Eldrazi. Perhaps Emrakul's spawn was more clever than Ulamog's or Kozilek's, or perhaps he had just been too rash. Either way, he was in trouble.

  
  


Then he heard the soldiers yell, “For the Legion!” and cursed. He shouldn't have expected them to run. They were Boros, after all.

  
  


They crashed into the Eldrazi in a line of spears and blades. Gideon was freed even as he watched another oddly angled tentacle swipe across his rescuer's face, opening an long cut that had already started to flake away into dust.

Now he yelled his own battle cry, his attempt to rally the troops as he cut down with his surral on the main mass of the thing. But it moved inexorably forwards, despite the wounds Gideon and his men inflicted. He knew, as the soldiers were learning, that this thing could not be stopped until it was cut to pieces.

  
  


Suddenly, there was a light so bright that Gideon had to shield his eyes despite the danger. When he opened them again, the greater mass of the Eldrazi was a smoking crater. They weren't the only reinforcements, it seemed.

  
  


He looked up to see an angel and a company of Skyknights. The angel  looked back at him, hand still smoking from the holy wrath she had unleashed.

  
  


“Gideon Jura,” she said, “Aurelia would like to speak with you.”

  
  


-

  
  


The trip back to Sea Gate was a short one, thanks to Ashaya. All they had to do was follow the trail of dust up the coast and before too long, Nissa could see the city on the horizon.

  
  


She could also see creeping vines and lichens already beginning to reclaim the waste. They were doing good work.

  
  


She left the elemental body of Ashaya outside of the city - no need to raise any alarm - and walked in past another group of soldiers who were rebuilding the wall. She went for the lighthouse where they had done most of their planning. Nissa climbed the stairs only to find not Gideon, but Munda.

  
  


It seemed he had seen her approach the city and was waiting for her, because before she could speak, he chuckled.

“No need to be so grim, my friend. I assume you’re looking for Gideon?”

  
  


She nodded, and her heart felt tight. If he wasn’t here helping Sea Gate, then in all likelihood he had gone to fight.

  
  


“Well… He’s gone. That friend of yours. Jace? He found the last titan.”

  
  


Nissa’s voice sounded small, even to herself. “Where?”

  
  


Munda waved his hand and snorted. ‘Some… _Place._ Gideon called it Ravnica. I don’t know, it’s planeswalker stuff. He wanted your help.”

  
  


The titan was off plane. It had _left_. It was no wonder she couldn’t feel it.

  
  


She reached out instinctively for Ashaya, for her connection to Khalni heart. It did not want her to go, but she felt a deep understanding, too. Zendikar would heal without her there. It would miss her, and would wait for her return, but understood what had to be done.

  
  


She cleared her throat, said a quiet thank you to Munda, and went back down the stairs.

  
  


There had been something else, too. Zendikar wanted justice, and had only gotten it against two of the three things that had hurt it so badly. She certainly wasn’t going deny it that.

  
  


She reached the bottom of the lighthouse and knelt down in a patch of earth.

  
  


“Goodbye,” She whispered, “I’ll come back soon.”

  
And then, for the first time in along time, she Walked.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snoot the mighty! Snoot the unerring!Snoot the unassailable! To you we give praise!


	4. Chapter 4

 

Jace was quickly coming to learn that even world-ending danger was not enough to get the guilds of Ravnica to work together.

 

Many of them were _trying._ The Azorius and Boros had dedicated their full support from the start, though law magic seemed to have no effect on any but the smallest of Eldrazi. The Simic and even the Golgari had offered what fighting forces they had and were trying to help in their own ways.

 

The Orzhov were offering their support in the form of money, with interest so high that no one in their right mind would be willing to accept. The Dimir and, surprisingly, the Selesneya had been all but silent.

 

The Izzet had sent nothing but an oil stained note, written in the scratchy handwriting Jace had come to recognize as Ral Zarek's. It read: _Came up with a plan, told the Firemind. He mostly agreed and put our resources on it, should have something soon- rz._

 

That was the only thing even resembling good news Jace had gotten in days. He didn't have a lot to offer to the guilds in terms of battle tactics - he had left that to Gideon and told them as much. They hadn't found a lithomancer yet, and without that, he was stuck trying to calm down the people who came to shout at the Guildpact to solve the problem.

 

When he wasn't doing that, he was sitting in his office, looking at the note Ral had sent him and trying to come up with a plan that didn't need any hedrons. If they couldn't find a mage capable of making them then he'd have to come up with another plan, and he didn't even know where to begin.

 

As much as he hated to admit it, Ral Zarek's plan,whatever it was, was all that they had.

 

Well, he certainly wasn't about to leave the fate of Ravnica up to the Izzet. Jace sighed and put the note in his pocket.

 

“Lavinia!” he called. “I'm going out.”

 

Her frowning face appeared from around the door-frame almost immediately.

 

“Where? It's dangerous outside. I'll arrange a guard-” Jace shook his head.

 

“Not necessary. I'm only going to Nivix.”

 

Lavinia's frown only deepened.

 

“I really think you should bring a guard with you. The streets may be clear but... Nivix is not.” Despite how tired he was he couldn't help but chuckle at her wariness.

 

“It'll be alright Lavinia. They're trying to help.”

 

She didn't seem to be convinced, not that Jace could blame her.

 

“I'll be fine,” he assured her. “I'm going to stop by Sunhome on the way to meet someone. He should be more than enough to keep me safe.”

 

If she had a response, he didn't stay around long enough to hear it. Maybe she would follow him out and take a walk of her own. Jace knew she could use a break too. Everyone could.

 

-

 

The roof of the main fortress of Sunhome never ceased to be beautiful. Or intimidating. The sun reflected off of polished metal, making everything gleam golden and highlighting the waiting Aurelia with a halo of light.

 

Gideon adjusted his armor and did his best to look presentable for the angelic leader of the Boros. He wasn't actually sure whether she was going to be angry or pleased with him, and her body language was impossible for him to read. The escort of skyknights that had brought him here had left him alone to deal with whatever she had in store.

 

He cleared his throat. “Guildmaster Aurelia.”

 

She nodded her head to acknowledge him but did not turn to face him.

 

“We meet again,Gideon Jura. You've been gone for some time now.”

 

Gideon swallowed nervously despite himself. He sill couldn't read her voice and could feel the power radiating off of her from where he stood several yards away.

 

“I was, yes. But I came back to help.”

 

“And where were you?” Now she turned, fixing him with a steely stare. “So much has happened in your absence.”

 

He was sorely tempted to tell her everything right there, about Zendikar and the reclamation of Sea Gate. About Ulamog and Kozilek and their victory over the titans. But he also remembered the conversation he overheard when he had first found Jace. He didn't know why Jace and his friend were so dedicated to hiding the existence of other planes, but he wasn't about to put their work to waste.

 

He kept his own expression as blank as he could.

 

“I was... Elsewhere.”

 

Try as she might, Aurelia couldn't keep the corner of her mouth from quirking upwards.

 

“Ah yes, _elsewhere._ Elsewhere fighting Eldrazi, given what the Guildpact has been saying about you and your performance earlier today.” He nodded, and now she turned to face him in full. “Then you may well be the most knowledgeable person on all of Ravnica when it comes to fighting them,” she said, “and our biggest asset in securing victory. Walk with me, Jura.”

 

That was an odd request from an angel, but Gideon obediently followed her as she went down the stairs into the fortress proper. He followed her through hallways filled with anxious looking guildmages and other wojeks, all of whom parted for her and stared at him. He didn't know how often she walked among the troops, but at the moment he seemed to be the one attracting all of the attention.

 

The room she led him to was one Gideon didn't recognize, but the smell of medicine let him know it was a hospital ward.

 

“I'm sure you know full well what kind of damage these hellspawn can cause,” she said quietly, “and this was done by only the smallest of them.”

 

Gideon let his eyes adjust to the dim light. He was more than familiar of the damage Eldrazi corruption could do, but what he saw here was on a horrifyingly different level. There were the dried, dusty wounds he was familiar with, but that was apparently only the first stage of this kind of corruption. After that came bruises, dry skin that cracked in odd and painful ways, and blisters that quickly turned into tumors. In the places where the wounds went down to the bone, there were growths; they were still small, but were beginning to curve and warp at painful looking angles. The corruption of the other Eldrazi would have killed most of these people by now, but Emrakul kept them alive, crippled and in pain.

 

“We cannot stop this madness by fighting the way we are used to. For every spawn we cut down, two more take its place. We need to lead an assault on the largest one.”

 

Gideon struggled to tear his eyes away from the wounded soldiers in order to look at Aurelia. He was all too used to seeing grief on the faces of angels, and though she was trying to hide it, it was there.

 

“With all due respect, Guildmaster Aurelia, a full assault on the titan would be suicide.” He didn't like admitting it,and she didn't like hearing it. He could physically feel the anger radiate off of her.

 

“What are we meant to do, then, Jura? Run and hide?”

 

“No. We've managed to defeat these things before. We just have to trap them first. I admit I don't know the specifics of how it works, but Jace - pardon, the Guildpact - should have something in the works. This is no small undertaking.”

 

The angel sighed. “I should have suspected it would be so complicated. On that note, the Guildpact is here looking for you. We can finish this conversation later, yes?”

 

Gideon nodded.

 

“I hope he has good news.”

 

Aurelia fixed him with one last stony look. “For your sake, and for the good of us all, I hope that he does, too.”

 

-

 

 

Ravnica was not a difficult place to find, in the scheme of things. It was large and filled with people and mana - it stood out like a bright beacon in the multiverse. And yet despite all of that, it felt oddly cold.

 

But then, to Nissa, anywhere would feel cold and alien compared to Zendikar. It certainly didn't help that she had landed in an apparently abandoned city square bordered by imposing cathedrals and gaudy basilicas. She had gone from a forest of earth and trees to one of stone and stained glass.

 

As soon as she arrived, Nissa instinctively reached her consciousness down, into the land, to try and make a connection to Ravnica.

 

What she found was incredibly strange to her. The plane of Ravnica _thrived_ off of the people who lived there. It needed just as many buildings to survive as it did trees. The leylines weren't the organic shapes she was used to, but instead bent into mathematically precise conformations: spirals within spirals, braided cords at right angles. They were no less natural than the ones on Zendikar, and yet to her, they seemed so artificial.

 

This place didn't have a heart like Zendikar did. The people here _were_ the heart that moved mana around the city. There were certainly places where it was more focused, but no real center, and for every one of those bright spots there was a a dark one too: the all too familiar feeling of the Eldrazi tearing the plane apart.

 

In her distraction, Nissa hadn't noticed the carriage that had silently approached her, nor had she noticed the large, richly robed man that leaned out of the door. Her eyes only opened when he called out to her.

 

“You there, girl! Are you lost?”

 

She blinked out of her reverie . He was obviously plotting something, and she knew she should be watching him, but the creatures that were pulling his carriage drew her attention far more. They were gray and rubbery, reigned by jeweled chains that certainly wouldn't be enough to hold them if they chose to turn on their holder.

 

She shook her head to clear it and come up with a response.

 

“Yes, sort of. I'm looking for, um... Jace? Or Gideon?” She didn't expect either of those names to get a response, but his brow wrinkled.

 

“Jace... Beleren? The Guildpact? He's not going to protect you any better than the Syndicate can. Come with me, now, and we can-”

 

“What? No. I just need to talk to him.”

 

Under normal circumstances, her flippant response would have angered him, but there was something about her combination of confidence and ignorance that made him say, “The office of the Guildpact is in the Tenth. But it's really not a place for-”

 

“Thank you ,” She interrupted, “I'll be on my way, then.”

 

With that, she stepped around the carriage and went on her way, more than eager to be away from this strange man - and this strange plane - as soon as possible.

 

The Ohzhov man didn't pursue, or even call after her. He just thoughtfully looked down at the thrull that rested in his lap and said, “What a strange girl. I wonder if she knows that's not the way to the Tenth?”

 

-

 

“I don't _exactly_ have a plan,” Jace told Gideon. “No one has found a lithomancer, and without that, I'm at a loss.”

 

They were walking through streets that were alternately filled with people - refugees, looking for safety - or were completely empty.

 

“That doesn't explain to me why we're going to Nivix,” said Gideon, frowning intensely. “I can't think of a reason to go to the Izzet unless you really do have an idea.”

 

Jace bit his lip nervously. “I don't. But I have a… _Friend_ who might. Another planeswalker named Ral Zarek. He sent me a note that seemed to imply a plan, anyways.”

 

Gideon tilted his head.

 

“Oh, the Izzet Guildmage? What does he have in mind?”

 

Jace didn't reply, he just shrugged and silently led them on to Nivix.

 

The inside of the guild was somehow even more of a mess than Jace expected it to be. There were groups of goblins and weirds being directed around haphazardly by guildmages. There seemed to hundreds of projects going on at once, and the Firemind was there trying to direct them all. He didn't even look up at the outsiders as they walked in, which was probably for the better because neither Jace nor Gideon particularly wanted to explain why they were there.

 

Jace didn't see Ral among all of the chaos, and that worried him. In fact, nothing he saw resembled the hedron he had shown Ral at all. The machines were big bulky things without obvious function - a brief look into the surface of a few minds around told him that they were for channeling energy.

 

He would assume, for now, that they were a part of whatever Ral's plan was.

 

Then he dove a bit deeper into the mind of a random passing goblin to find out just where Zarek was.

Apparently, though he certainly wouldn't have been able to tell from looking, Ral's lab was the center of all of these projects.

 

Jace took Gideon by the arm and led him around the edge of the room to the entrance of the personal labs. Gideon didn't seem totally convinced.

 

“I hope this friend of yours knows just how important this is,” he said, raising one eyebrow. They took a moment to dodge around a machine that was moving a suspiciously large number of boxes.

 

“Well,” said Jace, “friend is a strong term. But he's … Dedicated to Ravnica. He certainly won't be slacking.”

 

They got to the lab just in time to see an Izzet Guildmage dive out of the door to avoid a small lighting bolt. Jace frowned. Ral Zarek in a bad mood was not a Ral Zarek he wanted to deal with, but they certainly weren't leaving without figuring out what was going on. He peeked around the door to see-

 

Well, there was a lot to see. The floor was blanketed with blueprints and papers covered with equations, and perhaps far more than anything else, empty mugs. There was some machine set up in the corner that was projecting the same illusion of a hedron he had shown Ral before, along with some interesting looking math.

 

Ral himself was in his undershirt and was hunched over something that probably _originally_ looked like a hedron, but was made out of mizzium and brass and had far more wires than any hedron rightly should.

 

“If you've got the equipment,” said Ral Zarek without turning to face them, “leave it outside the door.”

 

Gideon looked unimpressed.

 

“By 'equipment,' you don't happen to mean 'Guildpact,' do you?”

 

“Hm?” Now Ral turned around. He didn't look like he had shaved or slept in several days. “Oh, it's you. What do you want?”

 

“We wanted to see was was going on. I...” Jace gestured helplessly at the room. “I wasn't expecting all this. It doesn't really look like I expected.”

 

Ral snorted. “Well unless you find a good lithomancer - and I don't think you will - this is what I'm doing.”

 

“I assume that means you have an idea on how to solve this?” Gideon asked.

 

“I...” Ral hesitated, then sighed. “I have many ideas. People are exited about the idea of physically manipulating leylines, I just don't know if that's going to solve the problem.”

 

Gideon frowned. “That's how we did it before.”

 

Ral shook his head.

 

“You already had a whole network of hedrons on Zendikar. We're working from nothing here.”

 

Jace felt his heart sink as Ral spoke. He was the best chance they had really had, and he was grasping at straws too. Gideon just shook his head.

 

“I won't pretend to understand the specifics, but whatever you plan to do, make it fast. You are aware that the titan is moving in this direction?”

 

The look of panic that crossed Ral's face made it obvious that no, he didn't know.

 

“Emrakul moves slowly, so there are still several days until you need to evacuate,” Gideon went on, “and its possible that she might change direction before getting close.”

 

Ral had already moved back to one of the desks and started to write madly.

 

He waved a hand a Gideon, and when he didn't get a response, Ral looked up with a frustrated expression.

 

“Well, what are you still doing here, then? Go and fight them, or whatever it is that you do. I can't work with people watching over my shoulder.”

 

Jace sighed as he realized something himself. _This_ was something he could help with; the Guilds were working together as closely as he could make them. He was far better suited to solving these kinds of problems.

 

“I want to help.”

 

Gideon looked as surprised as Ral did, but the Izzet guildmage quickly shifted to angry obstinacy.

 

“I work alone.”

 

Jace knew Ral well enough at this point to know that arguing with him wouldn't work, so instead, as carefully as he could do such a thing, he went into Ral's mind.

 

He was tempted to poke around, but instead started showing Ral pictures instead. Pictures of what he had seen on Zendikar- Ugin's Eye, the hedron rings they had made, the leylines he had seen when he had shared his mind with Nissa. Even with this shallow of a connection, he could feel the storm mage reflexively call up the mana for a lighting bolt.

 

But Ral controlled himself. Instead of frying Jace, he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, leaving a smudge of grease.

 

“Fine, you can try to help. But ground rules: ask before you touch anything, and before you go into my mind like that, unless you want a broken nose.”

 

Jace nodded. “Fair enough.” He moved over to one of the piles of paper on the ground and started examining the complicated looking equations on them.

 

Gideon still stood with his arms crossed.

 

“Do you need me to do anything?” he asked.

 

Jace tore himself away from the papers to look at him. They really were interesting.

 

“Do you think that it's possible to try and lure the titan away? To buy us more time.”

 

Gideon nodded, smiling grimly. “I can certainly try.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snoot has manifested in my house and brought me good fortune.


	5. Chapter 5

Nissa had never really been _lost_ before.

In the forest, she had never had to worry about districts or streets - _here,_ she had to concern herself with alleyways and dead ends and mobs of people. So many people that it was difficult to move freely. She got dragged along by the crowd, no idea of where she was going or where she was supposed to be.

  
  


Most of them seemed to be refugees, displaced by the Eldrazi. It was something she had seen far too often. They had lost their homes but still held out hope that there was somewhere safe out there.

On Zendikar, that had been Sea Gate, but here it seemed that most people had no option.

  
  


She could hear the whispers of families huddled in doorways as she walked by. The Orzhov would take you in and the accommodations would even be nice, but you would put your family into debt for generations. The Selesnya wanted to help but simply had no room left, and the Boros had plenty of extra room but asked you to fight, which was almost certain death. There were whispers of camps set up on the edge of the wastes, with hopes that the Gruul and Rakdos would ignore them.

  
  


If anything, it only strengthened Nissa’s resolve to help these people. If only the people would help _her_. It was nearly impossible for her to get someone’s attention in all of the chaos, and when she did manage to ask for directions, she was treated as though she was telling a joke.

  
  


It was disheartening. Nissa wormed her way out of the crowd to sit down on an empty patch of concrete - someone's porch that had been commandeered by the refugees.

This hadn't been what she had expected at all when she came to Ravnica. By now, she should be fighting off Eldrazi, she should have found Jace and Gideon, and they should be halfway done with solving the problem. Instead she was here, miserably watching people walk by.

  
  


She didn't even pay attention to whom she had sat down next to until he leaned over to her and asked, “Bad day, huh?”

Nissa stiffened, only barely stopping herself from reaching from her sword. She turned her head sharply and looked at the man - an elf, and an older one, at that. Or perhaps he was just so worn out that he looked old. Nissa had seen that happen to people before, too.

“I'm lost,” she said, “so I guess you could say that it's been pretty bad.”

  
  


He chuckled, but it was more melancholy than mean-spirited.

“Aren't we all a little bit lost?” He paused to pull a pipe from his pocket and started packing it full of something as he talked. “Well, where are you headed? I know the city pretty well.”

Nissa frowned, expecting a trick, but she didn't really have anything to lose.

“I'm looking for a place called the Tenth. I have a friend there.”

  
  


The man looked astounded for a moment.

“How'd you get this far in the city without knowing the Tenth?”

Nissa waved her hands helplessly, looking for a plausible explanation. This wasn't something she had to lie about often.

“I'm… Not from around here.”

It was the best she could come up with, and after a moment of consideration the man seemed to buy it.

“Out from the Wastes then? I didn't peg you for a Gruul, but I guess I've never been out there.”

  
  


She didn't respond. It was better to let him believe what was convenient for him - that was something she had learned from Jace.

  
  


“Well,” he went on, “the good news is, the Tenth is pretty well defended, so whatever friend you have there is probably okay. The bad news is that to get to there from here is pretty much certain death.”

  
  


He paused for a moment and looked at her.

“I guess you're going anyways, huh?”

  
  


Nissa nodded. She could feel the Eldrazi around and had already guessed they would be unavoidable.

A smile spread across the man’s face, like this was somehow the best thing to happen to him in weeks. Maybe it was.

  
  


“Then I can give you directions. I think the safest way will be through the Fourth, because there's a bunch of Izzet holed up there who will probably let you in to take a break. You'll know you're going in the right direction when you start seeing all the smoke stacks. From Nivix, it's just a straight shot east 'til you get to the Tenth, though I imagine they'll have some sort of barricade up. Shouldn't be a problem for you if you manage to get that far, though.”

  
  


Nissa stood up and nodded at him. “Thank you.”

He smiled back and puffed on his pipe as she turned to leave.

  
  


She didn't know if the man thought he was helping or sending her to her death, but either way she was grateful for the directions.

  
  


-

  
  


Nissa arrived at Nivix several hours later, and quite a bit worse for wear. She had managed to avoid most of the Eldrazi by sticking to the rooftops, but had had more than one run-in with the kind of drone that could fly. Those were especially hard to deal with, because killing them would mean going down with them into an ocean of other spawn - it was best to just run by and try not to get hit.

  
  


That tactic hadn't worked terribly well. She had bound up the worst of her wounds but knew she would have to get some rest here if she was going to make it all the way to the Tenth.

She missed Ashaya.

  
  


But Ashaya wasn't here. Nissa was.

  
  


She reached up and pounded on what she assumed was the front door of Nivix. It was big enough for a full-grown dragon to pass through easily; she imagined this place got a lot of traffic.

After a moment, the door creaked open, just wide enough for a goblin to poke his head out and dart his eyes from side to side.

  
  


He looked at Nissa like she was a stranger sight than the Eldrazi. All the same, he said, “Get inside, quick!”

  
  


She darted through the opening and the goblin shut the door behind her.

  
  


Nivix was... Not what she expected. The main room was utter chaos: nearly every spare foot of space was taken up by something, be it machinery or people. Everyone was working on something, it seemed, and none of it made any sense to her at all.

And there _was_ a dragon here, apparently directing the madness, though it didn't look like he was very organized.

  
  


“Er,” said the goblin from behind her, “how in the hell did ya get here?”

She turned away from the chaos and back to the goblin, who was scratching his nose.

“I walked,” she said, “and I'm looking for a friend.”

“That so? Who're you looking for?” the goblin asked. Nissa looked behind him to see stacks of crates and metal. It looked like the beginnings of the barricade.

“His name is Jace Beleren,” she said. “I think he's in the Tenth. I was told that I could stop here to rest.”

The goblin looked surprised for a moment, but then his expression shifted to something much more smug.

“You're lucky you came by then, ‘cause the Guildpact is stuck in here just like the rest of us.”

  
  


Nissa blinked. He didn't seem to be lying, and in fact if she considered it, this seemed like exactly the kind of place Jace would like to _be._

“The… Guildpact?” she'd have to ask him about that title later. “He's here?”

  
  


The goblin nodded and pointed past her, towards another hallway.

“He's holed up in the labs with Zarek. Make sure you knock first though, unless you feel like getting a nasty shock.”

His tone of voice implied that it had happened to him more than once.

  
  


Nissa bowed her head to him and said, “Thank you, I'll let you get back to work.”

The goblin stuttered, apparently unused to formalities like that. “N-no problem. Good luck with whatever you're doin’.”

  
  


She left him to build the barricade and very carefully skirted around the worst of the construction to the doorway he had pointed out. She didn't have to go very far before she heard a familiar voice.

  
  


“Listen to me.” It was Jace, sounding like he was losing an argument. “If we're going to trap this thing, then we'll need more than one hedron.”

  
  


Nissa didn't have to worry about knocking, either, because the door was already wide open. If she thought the main room was chaos, then this room was complete anarchy. There were huge piles of papers and blueprints everywhere, and on top of all of them were empty mugs and cups of what was almost certainly coffee. And there was Jace, with his blue cloak and one hand on his head like he had a terrible headache.

  
  


“We can't trap them here,” she interrupted. “The leylines are too delicate; they'd never hold a titan.”

The other man, who she guessed must have been Zarek, waved his hand at her without looking up.

“She's right. That's what I've been trying to say. She-” He paused for a moment and looked up with a confused and somewhat exasperated expression. “Who is this?”

  
  


Jace looked over at her and said, “Oh. This is Nissa.”

  
  


There was a long moment of silence as Jace stared blankly at her. Then he jumped in surprise like he had just seen her and rushed over to her as quickly as the papers on the floor would allow.

  
  


“Nissa! You came!”

She couldn't suppress the small smile that came from his excitement. He looked terrible, true, but then so did she.

  
  


Ral Zarek watched her for a moment before turning back to whatever he was working on.

“This is the elf who helped you out before, right?”

“Yeah,” Jace said, “I've shown you what she did.”

  
  


Ral grunted. “Well, she's right. Based on what I saw, this plan isn't going to work like you want.”

Jace looked helplessly at Nissa, who nodded in agreement.

  
  


“The leylines on Zendikar were thick and strong, like a rope,” she said. “The leylines here are more numerous, but they’re tiny. It would be like trying to tie a person up with thread.”

  
  


“A very strong person.,” Jace added. He looked and sounded completely defeated. Then he sighed, “I don't suppose you have any suggestions?”

  
  


Nissa frowned. “We only have to trap the titan for long enough to destroy it. I don't know what else could hold them, but I'm sure there has to be something...”

  
  


“If you're going to chat, do it outside,” Ral said. He was hunched over a desk, writing as quickly as he could. “It's distracting.”

  
  


Jace brightened a bit. “Do you have an idea?”

  
  


Ral sighed. “Only about a hundred. I'm gonna have to present a new plan to the Firemind.”

Jace took the opportunity to connect their minds. It would be far easier for Ral to explain what he was planning this way, and he knew it, even if he did shoot Jace a dirty look.

  
  


_At this point, our best option might be to push it out of the plane_. Ral flashed pictures of a few machines he had already thought up that might be able to do the job. _Move the thing to somewhere where it's easier to deal with_.

  
  


Jace shook his head. _I don't think that will work unless you can find a way to_ keep _it out, too. It can come back just as easily as you or me._

  
  


Ral said a couple of the rudest words he knew out loud.

  
  


_Fine. What about your plan?_

-

  
  


Ral Zarek stood in front of the Firemind with a list of the most plausible ideas they had come up with in one hand and another cup of coffee in the other. That and the occasional self administered shock were the only things keeping him awake at this point. He couldn't remember the last time he had slept, and knew he was obviously shaking.

  
  


Storm magic aside, this was his _element._

  
  


Jace and Nissa were both there, too, trying to look as innocuous as possible in front of the dragon. Ral had said he would do the talking, and neither of them were eager to dispute him.

  
  


Niv Mizzet craned his head down to get the best view of them as Ral started to explain.

  
  


“The original plan I proposed won't exactly work,” he started, “based on some of the information we've gathered.”

  
  


The dragon snorted, indicating that he'd guessed as much.

  
  


“But I … _We_ came up with a new plan that should work, and it'll only take a few modifications to what we've already started.”

  
  


“Go on, then,”said Niv Mizzet, his tone of dangerously low. “Explain what you've come up with.”

  
  


So Ral did.

  
  


Nissa Revane was appalled at what she was hearing. What this man was suggesting was trapping the Eldrazi - not like she had suggested, with magically enhanced elementals, but with a far more dangerous method. He was talking about drawing Emrakul in, making her a _part_ of the plane, connected to the leylines themselves.

  
  


“With just a bit more time, I can modify the hedron we've already made,” Ral was saying. “It needs more vertices to connect with the leylines, but with only a minor change to the mana conductors I see no reason why this wouldn't work.”

  
  


She found herself quickly becoming very angry. He was talking about this whole _plane_ like it could be solved with equations. Like he and the dragon were the ones who got to make the decision to bring that amount of pain to the land.

  
  


Jace looked over at her nervously and connected their minds.

  
  


_Are you okay?_ he asked

She made no attempt to hide her anger. _I'm_ _fine, but if you let them go through with this plan, this place will suffer from the roil worse than Zendikar ever did. If it survives at all._

Jace gaped at her, but Niv Mizzet chose that moment to rear back. He had apparently agreed with Ral's plan, because he had already started to issue orders to the watching Guildmages.

  
  


Jace looked around. There seemed to be less of them then he remembered. Most of them had probably evacuated, as they should have.

Ral turned back to face Jace and Nissa, quite literally swaying on his feet.

“This is going to take a lot of power, you know,” he said with a yawn. “Best case, we get a conductor for every vertex, but we can build it to perform at less-”

  
  


The next part of what he said was lost, partly by his own slurring of the words and partly by Niv Mizzet roaring over him.

“Re-purpose anything you can find into a mana conductor. Build them at the same- no, _higher_ standards than normal. Those with a connection to the Firemind can direct you to where to build them, and-”

  
  


Ral had grabbed Jace by the arm and began pulling him back to the lab. He was saying… _Something_ , but he was mumbling so badly that Jace couldn't make out the words.

  
  


“Hold- hold on. Ral, I can't understand you. Let me connect our minds for a minute so I can figure this out.”

Ral grunted noncommittally, but he also didn't threaten Jace, which he took as a go-ahead.

  
  


He tried to be as careful as possible, going for surface thoughts only, but Ral's surface thoughts were going so fast that he could hardly understand them any better than his words. Equations for things he wasn't even certain were related to the project were thought up and discarded before Jace could even begin to piece them together. There was the hedron, with extra sides and runes and wires.

There were emotions, too, even though he shouldn't have been deep enough to find them.

  
  


Ral was panicked. He was afraid. He didn't want to lose everything all over again, and the best plan they had could very easily fail, anyway. Wait, _again?_

Ral didn't seem to have noticed, or if he had, he didn't care anymore. It certainly didn't help that neither of them had gotten any sleep for days. Now wasn't the time to pry into it, anyway.

  
  


They went back to the lab, back to doing more calculations. Ral started to tear the hedron apart, then began rebuilding it to look even more complicated than before.

  
  


Ral was suddenly back in his head, making full use of the psychic link. _Check the angles of edges for me, will you? They need to be precise._

  
  


Jace blinked. _What are the angles you want? Maybe explain what you're trying to do. I can help, I just need some clearer instructions._

He could feel the frustration flowing off of Ral, but before he could retort, Nissa had showed up in the doorway looking furious.

  
  


“I can’t let you do this.”

Ral didn’t look up from the wiring he was working on. ”Do what?”

  
  


“Trap the titan here! If you make that thing a part of the plane, you're not going to do anything but hurt Ravnica! This isn't what I meant when I was talking about catching it.”

  
  


Ral sighed. “I know that it's not what you meant, but it gave me an idea. The tree branches wouldn't have held it in a way that would have trapped it like you wanted.”

  
  


“ _This_ isn't trapping it in a way that I want, either. I've seen a plane suffer from this before. I'm not going to let it happen again.”

  
  


Ral's head shot up. He suddenly looked a little angry, too.

“This isn't even your plane!”

“It's not yours, either,” she spat back. “Not to do this to!”

Ral grunted. “It's not the same as it was on your plane.”

“No. It's worse.”

  
  


Ral leaned back in his chair.

“No. No. Look, let's use metaphors. From what I understand, what you did on Zendikar was basically like tying the Eldrazi up in leylines. We already know that wouldn't work here. So instead, what we're going to do is like… Sucking the titan into the leylines like a drink into a straw. There won't be a knot, it'll just be a new sort of mana.”

  
  


Nissa looked angry. Jace looked uncertain. “You really think the leylines can handle that?” he asked. “Emrakul is bigger than her physical form...”

  
  


Ral shrugged. “I think it's a surface area to volume ratio thing. If any plane can handle it, Ravnica can.”

  
  


Nissa finally found her words. “That's not how these things work. You could just as easily destroy the leylines, and this whole plane would die with them. If you put a thing that _eats_ mana into the leylines, what do you think is going to happen?”

  
  


Ral looked up at her, the look in his tired eyes making her stop. She saw what Jace had seen a moment ago: the quiet desperation, the fear. Ral knew what this could do. He may very well have been building the end of Ravnica in this lab, but the end of Ravnica was already _here,_ just a few days, probably less, away. This was all he could do to stop it.

  
  


She reached back down into the land, past the stinking corruption of the Eldrazi, down to the leylines, then past the leylines to the heart.

Ah, that's right. She had almost forgotten. The people here _were_ the heart. And the people wanted to survive. In a sort of way, Jace and Ral were more connected here than she ever would be, simply because they considered Ravnica their home.

  
  


The plane was willing to hold the Eldrazi, if that's what it would take to survive. But just because the plane would accept it didn't mean that she had to.

  
  


“If you want to stop me, then go out and solve the problem,” said Ral. “Before I do.”

  
  


Nissa stared at him for a long moment, then nodded and turned to leave. If that was the challenge, then she would accept it.

  
  


-

Gideon never thought he'd see the day he'd fight _alongside_ the Eldrazi, but here he was.

  
  


Well, they were technically the zombies of Eldrazi, covered with Golgari fungus, but they were doing a fine job at keeping the waves of spawn at bay.

In fact, all of the guilds had really started to come together to defend each other. The Selesnya had grown a barricade to help the troops hold back the waves, even if some of those troops were Simic mutants. The Azorius had declared a proper state of emergency, dedicating their lawmages to fighting instead of paperwork. Even the Rakdos had decided to turn their ire against the Eldrazi.

  
  


It was the most unified he had ever seen the guilds, and he had been to a festival of the Guildpact.

With all of them working together, they had managed to defend a large area of the districts. All of the Tenth and some of each the surrounding districts fell under their protection.

He wished they could save more, of course, but spreading their troops too thin would mean that no one would be safe. Gideon had personally gone out of the safety of the barricade more than once to help lead some stranded gateless into the perimeter.

  
  


But today, he was on a different mission.

Emrakul was getting scarily close to Nivix. It would only be a few more days until she went through the building itself, and he hadn't heard any news from the Izzet, or from Jace. So he had sneaked away from the Boros camps and started heading towards the Fourth.

  
  


It was early morning, and the Eldrazi weren't out in particularly large numbers, but Gideon was still trying to avoid fighting them where he could.

  
  


He was almost to the Fourth when he stepped around a corner and into somebody else. It actually surprised him - he had been listening for spawn, but this person had been silent. Gideon whipped out his surral and looked up to see-

“Nissa!”

  
  


She wasn't the last person he expected to see here, but she was pretty far down the list.

Nissa sheathed her sword, having obviously thought that he was a spawn, too.

  
  


“Gideon. I've been looking for you.”

Nissa looked like she had been fighting Eldrazi four hours. She was spattered in ichor and blood, some of which was hers.

  
  


He looked around for anything that might attack them, but the street they were on was thankfully abandoned by both people and spawn.

“What do you need?”

  
  


Nissa took a deep breath. “Jace and his friend have a terrible plan to stop the Eldrazi. We need to kill Emrakul before they can.”

  
  


Gideon straightened up and sheathed his own weapon.

“You came from Nivix?” he asked. “They have a plan?”

Nissa made a sour face.

“Yes. And I think that it might work.”

  
  


She explained it to him as best she could. Gideon didn't seem to understand all that well; he was more concerned about when they would be done.

  
  


Frustrated, she said, “You know that even if they succeed, Ravnica might be doomed?”

Gideon gave her a sideways look. “But there's a chance that it won’t be. A small chance is better than no chance at all.”

  
  


Nissa decided right then that as soon as what's done here was done, she was going to leave. Back to Zendikar, back to Ashaya. She can fix her home, and they can fix theirs, if there's any of it left.

  
  


“You're on their side.” Her words were an accusation.

Gideon frowned. “I'm on the side that saves the most lives. We don't _have_ another way to kill the titan, otherwise we wouldn't resort to this.”

  
  


Nissa hunched her shoulders. As much as she hated to admit it, he was right. She almost found herself wishing that Emrakul had stayed on Zendikar. Maybe then they would have been able to deal with all three of the titans at once, and she wouldn't have to watch another plane suffer through the nightmare Zendikar had gone through.

  
  


“Well,” she said, “good luck then.”

Gideon hesitated for a moment, then nodded at her. “Good luck to you, too, whatever you do.”

  
  


She watched him head towards Nivix, towards Emrakul, and did not follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snoot is speedrunning magic the gathering.


	6. Chapter 6

The lab had been nearly silent since Nissa left.

Jace didn’t have to keep up a connection with Ral to know that he was angry - he could tell that much from the sparks arced off of him. He wasn't really sure how to broach the topic, so instead he just kept working at measuring out the last angle of the final panel they were adding to the hedron.

  
  


Ral was hunched over the panel, etching a set of runes down the edge that would help hold the enchantment they would be weaving later. Every now and then, he would reach over and pat out a spark to keep it from causing a fire.

  
  


Before too long, he was done with it. He turned to Jace, gesturing at him wordlessly with the piece of mizzium, then at the hedron, indicating that it was time to attach it.

  
  


Jace stared at Ral Zarek for a moment, and then cleared his throat.

“Are you… Okay?”

Ral looked up at him. The bags under his eyes were obvious.

“I’ve been better,” he said, apparently not even able to muster up the energy for sarcasm. “Thanks for asking.”

  
  


Jace had only _really_ gotten to know Ral recently, but it had been long enough for him to know that the dull tone of his voice was a bad sign.

Well, there wasn’t much more he could do to help, short of taking down Emrakul. Nothing that Ral would let him do, anyway.

  
  


Jace sighed and stepped over to the hedron. This was practically a routine by now - he held it in place while Ral welded the pieces together.

And just like that, the hedron was whole.

  
  


It was a work of art, Jace thought, maybe not in looks, but in design. If it did what it was meant to do, then this hedron would probably be revered by Ravnicans for years to come.

  
  


If it didn’t… Well, then he supposed he wasn’t going to have to worry about it.

  
  


Ral seemed less impressed. He grunted as he looked it up and down.

“I’m going to finish up with the last of the wiring,” he said. “Can you check the math again?”

  
  


Jace nodded. He had already checked the math about a hundred times and he was pretty confident in what he and Ral had figured out, but he knew it couldn’t hurt to check it again.

  
  


He sat down and found the last pile of papers that they had been working on. He had only gotten the basics of the theories from his time in Ral’s mind, but he understood the arithmetic. If only Ral’s handwriting was even a _little bit_ more legible.

Jace was able to make it through the first couple of pages, but the writing quickly devolved from chicken scratch to complete nonsense. He couldn’t even remember the parts _he_ had written. He couldn’t think of much else to do much else except ask.

  
  


He often found it easier to use his telepathy rather than talk, and this was no exception. He reached out to Ral’s mind; it had gotten progressively easier to form that connection the more he had done it.

  
  


Inwardly, somewhere, Jace knew he shouldn’t have tried to do this while both of them were so tired.

He had spent his life training himself to read only the thoughts that he wanted, but he was expecting to find just surface thoughts here.

  
  


Ral had fallen asleep, slumped over with his head on the hedron. There were no surface thoughts to connect to, no conversation to be had. If Jace had been a bit more awake himself he might have severed the connection before anything happened, but instead he fell into dreams.

  
  


Dreams of a little boy in a little district, of lighting, unwarranted, that bent back on him at odd right angles.

Dreams of a plane of empty dust and raging storm clouds, and a quiet voice saying, _Boy, as long as you’ve got that storm in you, you’re never gonna get a day of rest._

Dreams of that little boy spitting out blood from another lost fight and climbing to his perch in the Tenth, only to see swarms of Eldrazi in the sky.

Dreams of the terrifying emptiness of the blind eternities, and the way they made it feel like you were burning from the inside out. Dreams that Jace was all too familiar with.

  
  


Jace backed out and broke the connection as fast as he could. He had broken out into a cold sweat, and was he breathing hard. He had seen more than he meant to, more than he wanted. He was embarrassed, to say the least.

  
  


Jace looked over to Ral, expecting a bolt of lighting or at least some cursing, but he was still sleeping fitfully with wires clenched in his hands.

It was only fair, he supposed. It had been almost a week since either of them had slept, and honestly he was surprised he hadn’t fallen first.

  
  


Jace sighed shakily. It couldn’t hurt to let Ral rest for another moment or two. He wanted some time to figure out his own thoughts, anyway.

  
  


He hated dreams. He never knew what to make of what he had seen in them; they were too fragmented, and he usually felt like he was getting mentally kicked around the dreamer’s mind. All he was able to gather from what he had seen was that Ral was having something of a crisis, and that he was worried about it.

  
  


Not about what he was expected. Jace was pretty much over worrying about Emrakul by now - he was worried about Ral Zarek. He knew very well the troubles that could come from overworking.

  
  


He also knew that when he was _this_ tired, he would only be able to focus on one thing at a time, and decided that he was going to distract himself by cleaning up a bit.

  
  


He looked around. The room was filthy.

Jace slowly started to clean up. He moved the piles of paper into slightly more organized stacks and set the empty mugs outside of the room for someone else to deal with. Before too long he could see the floor, and he was out of distractions.

  
  


Well, he supposed he’d have to wake Ral up.

  
  


Jace walked over to where Ral was sleeping and very gently put a hand on his shoulder.

  
  


Ral jumped up almost immediately, raising an arm to guard his face like he was being attacked. A bolt of lighting sailed past Jace’s head and burned the floor.

It was a good thing he _had_ cleaned up, he decided, because that would have almost certainly started a fire.

  
  


“ _Shit_. Is it… Is it time?”

Jace had to reach forward and help steady Ral, who had overbalanced and would have otherwise fallen over.

“No, it’s fine. We’re fine. You just dozed off.”

  
  


“Oh,” Ral said, rubbing his eyes. For a moment, he looked quite a lot like the little boy in the dream, and Jace felt his heart lurch. “Well, it’s been a long night.”

  
  


“It’s going to be a long _week_ ,” Jace corrected, “And I don’t know about you, but I can’t weave a decent enchantment on no sleep.”

Ral snorted, beginning to come back to himself.

“I can weave a decent enchantment, but we need more than decent. You got a sleeping bag, Beleren?”

  
  


Jace blinked.

“Um,” he said, “No. Why?”

  
  


“‘Cause you need sleep, too. Come on.” Ral jerked his head towards the door. “I think I’ve got some spare blankets.”

  
  


Jace followed, dumbfounded. He felt like he should be in trouble after what he had seen, but Ral had no idea. He _did_ get a dirty look when Ral almost tripped over the mugs he had left outside the door, though.

He would tell Ral about what had happened later, Jace promised himself. When they were both able to deal with what was going on.

  
  


Ral actually had to stop and cast a spell to unlock his door.

“I didn’t want them getting in here and scrapping my stuff,” he explained. “I _know_ they have enough to build the siphons, and I’d rather my stuff be whole for when this is all through.”

  
  


If Jace hadn’t just been in his mind, he would have bought the confidence, but now he heard the slight tremor in Ral’s voice.

  
  


The room was dim but surprisingly clean, especially compared to the lab. There were shelves and shelves of little machines with purposes that Jace couldn’t even begin to guess at. There weren’t any stray wires or gears anywhere, and one of the walls was dominated by what looked like a painfully complicated and accurate clock. It looked like it might be telling the times on different planes.

  
  


Jace couldn’t help but whisper, “Wow.”

Ral gave him a look that was either curious or annoyed. It was hard to tell with him sometimes.

“Sorry, it just wasn’t what I was expecting,” Jace elaborated. “I thought things would be more… Unfinished.”

  
  


Ral rolled his eyes.

“I hate leaving things unfinished,” he said. “No point in starting something you don’t think is going to work.”

  
  


It was clear, of course, that he was trying to show how confident he was with their plan again, but faced with all of this Jace suddenly felt a small surge of hope. Ral really believed in this plan. He didn’t know how it was going to end, but it was _going to end_. That was something worth looking forward to, considering the state they were in.

  
  


He was so distracted that he didn’t even move to dodge the pillow Ral threw at his face. Ral was sitting on the edge of his bed and fiddling with some of the dials on his gauntlet.

  
  


“There’s a spare mat under the bed,” he said. Jace didn’t ask why - he was too busy watching Ral, who had tossed some of his belts to the ground and flopped onto the bed. He was asleep within moments, and looked to be a lot more calm than he was before.

  
  


Jace sighed and dropped the pillow on the ground. Now that Ral was asleep, he could get to work contacting Gideon and getting his help setting up the machines.

  
  


Ral’s clock struck three in the morning, though Jace wasn’t sure for which plane. It was going to be a long week, indeed.

  
  


-

  
  


The exits to Nivix had all been sealed to keep any Eldrazi from getting in. Emrakul and her swarm were close enough now that they threatened the whole district. Anyone who had stayed for this long - and that was a surprisingly large amount of the league - was trapped.

Groups of guildmages took shifts on the barricade that blocked the door. There hadn’t been a proper attack yet, but it was only a matter of time until it happened.

  
  


Jace was glad to see the precautions they were taking, but it also was going to make it a lot more difficult for him to get _out_.

He stood on the inside of the door, considering his options. It would be simple enough for him to use his mind magic to get one of the goblins to open a way for him, but if there were Eldrazi out there, then he would be putting everyone at risk.

And the Eldrazi didn’t have enough of a mind for him to tell if there _were_ any out there or not.

  
  


Luckily, it didn’t end up mattering. Jace was shocked out of his own thoughts by a pounding at the door. The guards started shouting and scrambling for more defendable positions, but an Eldrazi would never _knock_.

He reached his mind out, past the wave of exhaustion that was the collective Izzet Leauge, to the person outside the door. He didn’t even have to make the connection to recognize who it was.

  
  


“Gideon!”

Some of the guards turned to look at him in confusion.

“It’s Gideon! Open the doors!”

Jace tacked on a more _mental_ suggestion with that as well, and their hesitation quickly turned to compliance as they moved to clear a path.

The door was only opened wide enough for one person to squeeze through, but that was enough for Gideon, who seized the opportunity and quickly climbed up the barricade and into the building. He even stayed for a moment to help them shut the doors, though he had cleared out any spawn that had been close by.

  
  


As soon as things were settled up there, Gideon climbed down the barricade and walked over to Jace with a warm smile. Somehow he always managed that, even in dark times like these.

  
  


“I’ve heard that you’ve got a working plan,” he said. He sounded far too enthusiastic about it given what the plan entailed.

  
  


Still, Jace tried to muster up a smile in return.

“We do,” he said. “It’s… Complicated.”

  
  


“But you’re almost finished?” Gideon sounded just as eager to be done with this as Jace was.

  
  


Jaced nodded. “I was actually going to look for you. We’re going to need some help setting up the trap.” Gideon thoughtfully wiped some Eldrazi ichor off of his jaw.

  
  


“Well,” he said, “tell me what you need.”

  
  


And so Jace did.

  
  


Much like the hedrons, the mana siphons they had built would have to be set up around the titan. Ral had begrudgingly agreed that Nivix itself was a good place to stage the trap - they would have access to the power supply and a few of the machines could be set up in relative safety. Emrakul was already threateningly close, so it would be their best chance at actually _saving_ the building.

  
  


The issue, of course, came with moving the machines themselves. They were big and bulky, and didn’t float like hedrons did. Some of them would have to be placed _behind_ the titan as she moved into the trap, which meant fighting through the swarm that followed her and protecting the machines as they did their work. True enough, they had more resources on Ravnica than they did on Zendikar, but they hadn’t had to escort the hedrons through the swarm before.

  
  


“Well, if you’re certain this is going to work,” Gideon said after a considerable amount of thought, “I think we can handle it.”

  
  


Jace nodded. He had, of course, left out the his theories of what might happen once their plan was _done_.

  
“In that case,” Jace said, gesturing at the Izzet behind him, “you’re going to want to meet the people you’ll be protecting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wowie are we getting close to the end here... Snoot (the wonderful beta you have all come to know and love) asked me to change the story to be about the three Klarvhs but I decided to give them their own spin-off TV series.


	7. Chapter 7

Jace and Ral Zarek stood on the roof of Nivix, wind whipping hair and cloak about and chilling them down to the bone. There was a storm rolling in - one that, for once, wasn’t conjured by Ral. Behind them, a group of guildmages was carefully maneuvering one of the mana siphons up the stairs to be set up. Behind _them_ was Niv Mizzet, perched on the side of the building and watching over them with a careful eye.

  


In order for the hedron to do its work, it had to physically touch the titan. The mizzium was strong enough to put up with quite a bit of stress. Testing with the spawn showed that it could resist turning to dust for almost a full day, so they had figured that the safest course of action would be to drop it on top of Emrakul. Niv Mizzet had offered to do the job himself, claiming that only _he_ would be able get the trajectory right to make everything work. They had agreed, of course, and Ral certainly wouldn’t complain if the dragon got injured in the process.

  


All of the siphons that could be safely set up had been, though Jace could only see a handful of them from his spot up here. Most of them were hidden behind buildings - buildings that they were expecting to be demolished by the time their plan would start. As for those in unsafe locations…

  


Jace leaned over the edge of the roof and squinted to try and catch a glimpse of shiny metal. Gideon was somewhere down there, cutting a path through the spawn to keep another crew of Izzet and their siphon safe. Of course, he wasn’t the only one. There were four that they would have to place behind Emrakul, which meant four small armies had to navigate the streets. He knew that Aurelia was leading one and Lavinia the other, but the fourth group was being co-led by Vorel and a Gruul woman with whom Jace wasn’t familiar. He trusted the first three to get there on time, but the fate of the last was uncertain.

  


That wouldn’t do, of course. If one of the machines didn’t make it to its place, then this whole endeavor would fail. It bothered Jace, but it seemed to bother Ral more. From their vantage point, there was nothing they could do but watch and wait.

Ral paced in a circle around the roof impatiently, forming and dispelling a ball of lighting in his hands just so he had something to _do_.

  


Ironically, they were too close to Emrakul to be able to see her past all of the buildings - they would only be able to see how it had gone down below once she had destroyed the high-rise that blocked their view, and then they would only have a precious few minutes to enact their plant before she reached Nivix and destroyed everything they had worked so hard on. The only indication they had of her approach was the very top of the titan, barely visible over the roof.

  


It was unsettling to not know how long they had left until she would appear. Jace found himself feeling wired and completely awake despite having only gotten a few hours of sleep. This was it - this was when they got to see if their work would save everything, or if they had failed.

And if they _failed_ …

  


Jace looked over at Ral, who was watching the guildmages bolt the mana siphon down to the roof with an irritated look.

Jace would survive, and Gideon and Nissa would be fine. If worst came to worst, they could escape and confront Emrakul on another plane. It would be terrible, but that was an option for them.

But he wasn’t sure if he would be able to convince Ral to leave. He would try to stay with Ravnica until the end. Until _his_ end.

Besides that, he seemed prone to do something stupid and dangerous once Emrakul showed up. Something more stupid and dangerous than usual, anyway.

  


Now Ral was walking towards him, probably to lean over the edge to try and spot of one of the groups with the other machines. If things went wrong, he didn’t want to leave it like this. He had promised himself that he would tell Ral about the dreams he had seen, and there was every reason he wouldn’t get that opportunity. He almost surprised himself when he started talking.

  


“Ral, I need to tell you something.”

The storm mage turned his head. He had probably meant to look annoyed, but instead he looked worried. Stress had already undone any good the sleep had done for him.

“What?”

  


And then another thought came to him.

Ral Zarek hated leaving things unfinished. If he left it like this - if he left Ral wondering what he had to say - then there was a chance that maybe he wouldn’t do something dangerous. There was a chance he would work a little bit harder to survive, and then Jace would get to see him again once this was all done.

Of course, there was also the chance that this would backfire terribly,  Ral would die _anyway,_ and Jace’s last words to him would be about something he never got the chance to tell him.

  


But still, Jace licked his lips and said, “I’ll tell you later.”

  


Ah, _now_ Ral looked annoyed. His brow furrowed like it did when the math wasn’t working out how he wanted it to.

  


“Then don’t bring it up. I’ve got enough to worry about with these half-rate guildmages running around like headless pigeons.”

  


Jace smiled despite the sick feeling in his stomach.

“Sorry,” he said, “I got ahead of myself.”

  


Ral snorted at him and peered over the edge himself, eyes scanning for some change in the swarm’s behavior, some sign that there was a fight going on down there.

  


Jace could hear what sounded like shifting sands in the distance: the tell-tale dust caused by Emrakul’s passage cascading down into the streets. She was close.

He hoped what they had done was enough.

His eyes slid over to Ral. It _had_ to be enough.

-

Ral had to shield his eyes from the clouds of dust that the storm had whipped up. The storm over the Tenth looked particularly nasty today, and he was thankful for it. The howling of the wind blocked out the sound of collapsing buildings and made the wait a little bit easier for him to bear.

  


Normally, he would never worry about whether or not an experiment of his would succeed or not. He had done the work, so _of course_ it would- he didn’t see point in trying if he wasn’t sure. But the stakes here were too high for him not to feel just a little bit of doubt. If he had gotten the time to test it on a smaller scale… If he had gotten the chance to visit Zendikar, to examine one of the real hedrons there, he might feel a little more confident.

As it was, he had done all that he could.

  


He looked over at Jace, who had gathered his cloak around him to block out some of the cold. He was acting strange now as well, probably having doubts of his own.

As he if didn’t have enough to worry about.

  


This whole ordeal seemed to have given Ral more empathy than was good for him. He was tempted to take a step over, to put a hand on Jace’s shoulder and assure him that it wouldn’t go wrong. He almost did, but at that moment, the stones on the side of the building facing them started to fall in. He could catch glimpses of bright pink tentacles behind the dust.

Empathy be damned, it was time.

  


Ral conjured up his own wind to blow the dust away. He only had a few moments to get a look at the other siphons. They were all in place - holes in the swarm being held with the help of walking trees and zombies.

He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Ral didn’t know enough about how Selesnya elementals worked to know if they would disrupt anything with the leylines. It was far too late to make any adjustment for it now.

  


Behind him, Niv Mizzet roared and took off into the sky, hedron grasped in one clawed hand. For a brief moment, he was above the clouds, backlit by lightning, and then he dived down, dipping only barely above Emrakul’s reach as he let the device go. From this far away, it looked like nothing more than a mote of light that stuck to the top of the titan. She payed it no mind - it was only a little bit bigger than a person, and of no bother to something her size.

  


Niv Mizzet banked back up into the clouds, only narrowly avoiding a tentacle around his back leg. No doubt he would have to contend with other spawn in the air, but none would be as dangerous to deal with as the titan.  

  


Ral watched with tense shoulders, only able to breathe once the hedron was half-buried into Emrakul’s flesh. He took a deep breath and summoned a lightning bolt - the brightest he could muster - to crack the sky, with thunder that followed loud enough to deafen him briefly.

  


One by one, the machines hummed to life, pulling the leylines from invisibility to a blurry light, then even farther into focus as the siphons chugged on. Each one was its own complex network of bends and angles, with its own color and its own logic, and each one found itself drawn to the hedron in Emrakul’s back like the end of a magnet seeking its opposite. Each line sunk itself in one of the points. Some passed through the titan to get where they wanted to go.

  


But they didn’t stop there. With the help of the machines, the hedron pulled the leylines even deeper, coiling them up like rope. The air around it started to bend and warp like fabric when a stitch is pulled too tight, and Emrakul was bending with it. The leylines were growing brighter by the second, beginning to whip around to try and break free. It looked something like one of the plasma balls Ral had built for fun when he had first joined the league, but with no glass to protect the people on the other side.

  


He let his gaze slip away from the spectacle to look at Jace.

Jace was looking back at him, the first drops of rain sticking his hair to his face and highlighting the dip where his neck met his collarbone, and how it was maybe a bit too pronounced. Somehow, frustratingly, Ral had grown fond of him.

Well, it was just another thing to lose if things went wrong.

  


He nodded at Jace, not even really sure himself what he was trying to say, and turned back to the mana storm they had created. He wished he had brought something to take notes on.

  


And then he picked up on something strange. The leyline on the far side from him - the one that Gideon had set up and was currently defending from what looked like a very angry swarm - had something wrong with it. It was too weak; it wasn’t pulling in as quickly as the others, and that would upset the whole balance of things. It could rip a hole they didn’t want.

  


It only made sense, of course, one of the siphons was set up on top of the area that Emrakul had passed over last, and the leyline it had attached to had been stripped of mana. The siphon was pulling too hard and would probably break the leyline. He could see the guildmages below scrambling to fix the problem. They had no idea what they were doing; he could tell from all the way up here.

  


Oh, it was going to be up to _him_ , wasn’t it?

  


Without sparing too much time to overthink it, Ral leapt over the edge of the roof, calling up a storm cloud to ride like he had so many times before.

He was expecting it to be difficult, that there would be some interference from the titan and the skewed leylines. Instead, he overshot it by a huge margin. It was easy, _too_ easy, thanks to all of the excess mana, and he almost lost his grip on his own spell as the cloud zipped around the edge of Emrakul’s range and down towards the malfunctioning siphon. Somewhere behind him, Jace shouted something that got lost to the wind.

  


He reached the machine just in time for the spell to break free of his control and went tumbling down, hitting the ground with a bounce and a roll. He felt like he might have broken something, but now wasn’t the time to examine that particular pain. The panicked guildmages stepped back at his approach, more than willing to let him take charge.

The siphon was solidly built to the specifications he had detailed to Niv. He would he hard pressed to make any changes to it now, especially without a blow-torch or something similar. There was no _time_.

  


That left Plan B, which he had come up with on the spot. It was dangerous and stupid and it would probably get him killed.

  


He reached out and grabbed the amplified leyline with his bare hands.

  


This was like every time he had gotten to use Nivix’s power supply added together, and then multiplied tenfold. This was more than the storm; this was that, and the storm that came after. This was the thing that kept every Obzedat ghost and Selesnya elemental and Izzet weird functioning. This was the Worldsoul, this was the Guildpact, this was the hopes and dreams of the guildless running through him. For perhaps the first time in all of Ravnican history, all of those groups shared a common goal.

They wanted to stop the Eldrazi.

  


If he hadn’t shared that desire, Ral probably would have been destroyed on the spot. But he did, and so the leyline let him in, and let him bend it to his will so that it didn’t break. He could feel the other leylines from here, being pulled in tight towards the hedron. Seeing it like this, he was suddenly certain. This was going to work. If he could hold this for long enough, it would work. Emrakul was already wound up tight in the leylines; her physical form was all but indistinguishable from the light that was coming off of the leylines.

  


There was something else in his head now - something hard to hear over the voices of everything _else_ in Ravnica. A voice he would have missed if it had been anyone else.

  


_Ral!_

It was Jace in his head, from across a city block and sounding distinctly worried.

 _Oh, good. Jace_! He got the impression that his thoughts were somehow too loud. _I’m going to need you to give the signal. I’m a bit preoccupied at the moment._

  


_But if you reverse the pull, you’re going to end up pulling Emrakul… She’s going to go right through you. You’re going to-_

He found it entirely too easy to speak over Jace, to make him listen to what he had to say.

_I could do a whole lot worse if we let this keep going. Give the damn signal, Jace._

Jace felt… Sad. Ral couldn’t tell if he was feeling it through their mind-link or through the leylines, but the emotion was there. He thought that something terrible was going to happen to Ral if he sent out that signal. He was probably right.

  


But something worse would happen to everyone else if he didn’t.

So, resignedly, Jace said, _Alright._

  


He cut off the link then, partly so he wouldn’t have to feel Jace’s disappointment and partly to protect him from whatever he’d be going through in a few moments.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered the bolt of lighting - an illusion, no doubt, because Jace had no talent for the real thing - and started pulling back on the leyline. As he did, the other machines reversed their pull as well, and the leylines started winding back, colors fading from angry reds and blues to greys, still glowing, but faintly.

  


Ral Zarek closed his eyes just as Emrakul hit him.

  


-

  


Jace felt helpless up there on the roof. Ral had, without word or warning, jumped off and left him alone to watch Emrakul slowly disappear into nothing.

Ral had severed their mind-link before Emrakul had hit him, and Jace could do nothing to try and defend him from what would almost certainly be an onslaught on his mind.

  


Niv Mizzet had touched back down on the roof and was watching the proceedings with an interested eye and he couldn’t even register it. Ral was standing there, as resolute as any of the machines and pulling the leylines back into place. From all the way up here, he looked like a little doll, and the leyline looked like a string that ran through his chest.

  


It was all too easy to imagine what Emrakul’s corruption would do to him. His ribs would start growing in the wrong direction, and-

Well. He didn’t want to think about it. Ral Zarek was as good as dead, and was probably going to have to suffer for months to get there.

  


Jace felt sick to his stomach. He could hardly watch the leyline pass through Ral, but he did, and he saw the line shift back to the machine. He saw Ral stand there for a moment, then fall. Someone - was that Gideon? - walked over to him and picked him up. He couldn't tell if Ral was breathing or not. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know.

  


Down there, Gideon was calling for a medic, walking past the ruins of buildings that had started to grow bones. In front of him was a swathe of ruin: off-white dust billowed up into clouds, a long stripe of wasteland carved through the city.

  


And yet on either side, buildings still stood. Izzet scientists cheered and cried and hugged the Selesnyans and Golgari who game to help them down from the ledges of buildings. The Boros and Rakdos were down there cheering at the same victory.

  


They had won. Emrakul and her swarm were gone, and the machine behind Jace was powering down to a hum. Somehow, Ravnica had survived. Even if it had been at a terrible loss, even if the person Jace had wanted to live hadn’t, Ravnica had _survived._

  


-

  


Nissa sat on the roof of an abandoned Selesnya fort, knees pulled under her chin. She could feel the leylines being pulled tight. It was bad. It felt _wrong._

  


Ral Zarek had started his plan, and she hadn’t been able to do anything about it. There was a whirlpool of leylines, all focused on that hedron and warping everything unnaturally. Emrakul was trapped in there, no doubt, forced into the leylines along with her spawn.

  


There was a light in the sky and a twist in her stomach. Maybe she had been too late to stop it, but that didn’t mean she was too late to help. Nissa inhaled and closed her eyes. It was so easy to follow them down to the problem. The hedron pulled everything towards it with a force that Nissa wasn’t sure she could resist, even if she wanted to.

  


Emrakul wasn’t there. She was caught up in the leylines, pulled into their endless fractals. Whatever she _was_ had been shredded up, pulled in ten different directions. It was starting to disperse across the whole plane.

Ral Zarek was there, though, connected to the leylines in a way she never thought him possible of.

  


He was pulling on the leyline, putting it back in place, but he was pulling too hard. She knew an amateur when she saw one. He had no subtlety, and was just letting the essence of the titan run through him. It wasn’t good for him, and it wasn’t good for the leylines, either. From this distance, all she could really do was direct it around him. The machines he had built would do a good enough job at pulling them back into place, and, assuming they survived having the color stripped out of them, they would be able to fix themselves.

  


He was too far gone to even realize she was there, pulling the power out of him. He had been hurt, but she had given him a chance to survive. A small chance, and not one that she was sure that she wanted to give him, but it was a chance.

  


Nissa opened her eyes and stood up. In the distance, there was a hedron floating in the air, glowing bright red with heat. Below her were the leylines, already changing shape to deal with the new influx of mana. This was going to bring great change to Ravnica, and she didn’t think it was going to be good.

  


“Well, you’ve won, Ral Zarek,” she whispered to herself, “I hope you’re happy.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But wait, you say, that can't be the end!
> 
> Well, it's not. Originally the last two chapters were one really big chapter but I decided to break them up for better flow and for my own sanity. There's one chapter left, wherein we get to learn the fate of the survivors... and perhaps... just perhaps... the three Klarvhfs
> 
> Also, you should all thank Snoot, who is mighty and who rips the content apart with their bare hands.


	8. Chapter 8

The medical bay of Nivix had always been notoriously overused and understaffed. Generally, the doctors that worked there only prescribed amputations and shocks for ailments that didn’t at all call for that sort of treatment.

  
  


So imagine Ral Zarek’s surprise when he awoke on one of the uncomfortable cots of the so-called hospital with all of his fingers and toes still attached. It took him a moment to get his bearings. He couldn’t quite remember how he had gotten here. His face itched - it had apparently been a while since he had shaved, but that didn’t really tell him much. If he had collapsed from exhaustion again,  he probably hadn’t remembered to shave for weeks anyways.

  
  


Worryingly, there seemed to be bandages around his chest where his shirt usually went. He didn’t _feel_ like he’d been electrocuted or burned or anything of the sort. In fact, he felt better than ever, probably on account of all of the sleep he had gotten.

  
  


Ral sat up, balancing on his elbows. It looked like the hospital was even busier than usual. Beds were packed and people lined the walls waiting for help. Maybe there had been an explosion? That might explain why his head felt so fuzzy.

  
  


He caught a glimpse of bone growing out of somebody’s shoulder. Okay, not an explosion. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be here anymore.

  
  


Carefully testing his legs - it seemed those weren’t broken, either - he slipped off of the bed. Thankfully, the doctors had left him his pants.

  
  


Ral tried his best to ignore the wide-eyed looks that people gave him as he made his way to the door. He didn’t know what they were thinking about him and, frankly, he didn’t want to. _He_ wasn’t the one with weird tumors that looked like mushrooms. He had double checked.

  
  


Outside, the line to see a doctor extended down the hall. Ral scanned it for someone he knew and who didn’t probably hate him.

  
  


Oh, there was Maree. He sighed. She would have to do.

  
  


Ral walked up to her. She didn’t look up; she appeared to be nursing what looked like a perfectly normal burn wound, and was pouting and blowing on it.

  
  


“Hey, Maree,” he said. “Do you know where they put my clothes?”

  
  


She looked up at Ral and blinked very slowly.

“You… You’re alive? You’re _walking_?”

  
  


Ral rolled his eyes. He was probably going to get a lot of that sort of treatment, if that was her reaction.

“Yeah. Should I not be?”

She gaped at him.

“Considering that they had to replace half of your organs, I would guess _no._ You grabbed a leyline with your _bare hands_ , Ral!”

  
  


He looked down at the bandages on his chest and said, “Oh. Huh.”

Ral picked at the edge of the gauze as he considered this.

“Wait a minute. _Who_ replaced my organs?”

  
  


She waved her burned hand around as if to shrug.

“Niv Mizzet payed a bunch of Simic scientists to save your life and figure out how to stop the corruption.” Her eyes slid away from him, and he saw the corner of her mouth quirk down. “Apparently, he’s very excited to talk to you about the implications of what we did. Excited enough to spend a part of his hoard on keeping you around.”

  
  


Ral didn’t comment on how jealous she sounded. He just shrugged and said, “I guess that was nice of him. You didn’t answer my question about my clothes, though.”

  
  


Maree gave him a blank stare.

“I think they dropped them in your room... Do you even remember what happened?”

  
  


Ral shrugged. He was sure he’d figure it out.

  
  


At that, he stepped away from the conversation, ready to head back to his room so he could see the damage they had almost certainly done to it in his absence.

  
  


His room was on the other side of the main hall, and he made sure to go the through the back hallways to avoid having to see Niv Mizzet. No reason to get his attention just yet.

  
  


True to Maree’s word, the door was unlocked - he was already coming up with ideas for new locks that only he would be able to open, though that wouldn’t help anything if he forgot to lock it back.

  
  


Ral was surprised to find that his room was pretty much exactly as he had left it. There was actually a very thin layer of dust on almost everything. He should have asked just how long he had been out.

  
  


And there were his clothes, folded up on the bed. He picked up a shirt and gave it a curious sniff. Someone had washed them, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

  
  


He started putting on his shirt anyway, though it felt a bit tighter thanks to the bandages.Right as he smoothed it down, he heard a knock at the door.

He had forgotten to lock it again, he realized, so whoever it was at least had the courtesy to knock. That ruled out most of the people Niv Mizzet would send for him.

  
  


He called out, “ _Just a second!”_ and ran a hand through his hair. He had wanted to shave, at _least._ Ral took a minute to get himself looking as presentable as possible, then walked over and opened the door.

  
  


Standing there, looking even paler than he usually did, was one wide-eyed Jace Beleren. Jace immediately reached out and took Ral’s hand.

“I came as soon as I heard you’d woken up. Are you okay?”

  
  


Ral was taken aback by how worried Jace sounded. Had he hurt really been that badly?

“I’m alright,” he said. “And while you’re here, I’ve got some questions for you.”

  
  


Jace followed Ral in as he took a few steps backwards to sit down on the bed. He even closed the door behind him.

  
  


“Okay, first off,” he started, “what the hell happened to me?”

  
  


Jace stared at him and licked his lips nervously.

“You sort of… Channeled the essence of an Eldrazi titan? It was impressive, don’t get me wrong, but it also corrupted pretty much all of you.”

  
  


“Okay…” Ral paused for a moment to consider this. “Is there a reason that I don’t know what any of that means?”

  
  


Jace looked away, turning red as if he was embarrassed.

“I was in your head. Um, twice, actually.”

  
  


Ral raised an eyebrow.

“If you’ve erased my memories, I’m not going to be happy, Beleren.”

  
  


Jace held up his hands

“No! Well… Yes. But no.” He sighed. “When I said they corrupted everything, that included your mind. I cut out everything they had touched, which was basically everything that had to do with them. I may have cut out a little too much, but I was just trying to be safe. Pretty much everything you lost was stuff I was there for, so I can show you everything. It’ll be from my perspective but I think you’ll be able to piece things together.”

  
  


Ral stared at him. Jace was tensed up, like he was expecting Ral to be angry. He felt like he should have been, but he couldn’t muster up any fury at the mind-mage. He sighed.

  
  


“Calm down. I said I wouldn’t be happy, but I’m not going to shock you. You did save my life, after all.”

  
  


Jace’s shoulders fell, partly in relief and partly in what seemed to be more embarrassment.

“I _did_ say twice.”

  
  


Ral blinked.

“What are you saying? What else could you have _done_?”

  
  


Jace swallowed hard. “It was an accident. You were asleep, and I didn’t realize, and…”

He stopped and took a deep breath. “I can show you, along with the rest of your memories, if  you’ll let me.”

  
  


Ral felt sparks arc down his spine. He hadn’t had time to put his gauntlet back on yet.

“Do I really have a choice?”

  
  


Jace shrugged apologetically. Ral pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes and groaned.

“Alright, then. Let's get this over with. Show me.”

  
  


Jace nodded, and his eyes started to glow a bright blue. Ral could feel the presence in his head. For some reason, it was… Familiar?

  
  


Then, all at once, there were memories. There were the boring meetings, the first sight of Emrakul, hanging over the rooftops . There were the long days and nights (weeks?) in the lab working with Jace, building the hedron.  There was Nissa, helping, and later fighting them. There was the roof of Nivix, thunderstorm brewing, and Ral reaching into the leyline.

  
  


There was the night in the lab, when Jace had gotten caught up in his dreams and saw the sorts of horrors he could never remember after waking up.

  
  


Though it was all from Jace’s point of view, Ral could feel his brain making the connections from one little shard of memory to another. This had really happened. He had really jumped off of a roof to channel what could only be described as _concentrated Eldrazi_.

That was stupid of him.

  
  


The memories brought on feelings, too, and he wasn’t so sure who those belonged to. Ral had to stop himself from pulling Jace into a hug. Somehow, he was certain that Jace felt the same.

  
  


There was a tightness in his throat that he tried to push away. He wanted some time to examine all of these emotions later.

  
  


Now it was Ral who looked embarrassed.

“Um,” he said. “Thanks.”

  
  


There was a long, tense moment of silence as Ral ran his hand through his hair. All of the questions he had were lost in his new concern with Jace and how he was _feeling._ That was the trouble with empathy.

  
  


Jace bit his lip.

“I meant to tell you before, but I couldn’t find the right time. I’m sorry.”

  
  


Ral looked back to Jace. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen him so sincere, or so upset.

“It’s fine,” he said, trying his best to smooth things over. “It’s fine. You were trying to help. I guess you did.”

  
  


Jace nodded, then fell silent. They both fidgeted nervously and tried to think of something to say. Eventually, Ral cleared his throat and said, “So… How long have I been out for, anyways?”

  
  


Jace gave him a halfhearted smile.

“About a week and a half. I’m surprised you’re able to walk after the amount of surgery they did on you.”

  
  


Ral looked down and put a hand on his chest.

“People keep saying that. I heard something about them replacing all of my organs?”

  
  


Jace nodded.

“I understand that the Simic used a lot of experimental ideas on you. You were sort of their ‘patient zero’ for learning how to deal with the corruption.”

  
  


Ral frowned. “Well, it seems to have worked.”

  
  


Jace nodded and used the break in conversation to sit on the bed next to Ral.

“I hear it was pretty expensive, though,” he said. “Apparently, they had to grow you a new pair of lungs in a test tube. I guess that’s the Simic for you.”

  
  


“That’s something else I don’t get,” Ral said. “Niv Mizzet payed for me to live? That doesn’t sound right.”

Jace actually raised a hand to stifle a chuckle at that.

  
  


“Well it wouldn’t do for the Izzet to lose their most famous hero, now would it?”

  
  


“Their most… Their… _What?”_

  
  


Jace smiled at him.

“Between you, me, and Gideon, I think we’re the most famous people on Ravnica right now. But you especially. Some of the tabloids claim that you defeated Emrakul in single combat.”

  
  


“But that’s _ludicrous_ ,” Ral sputtered. “There’s no way anyone could do something like that.”

  
  


“That doesn’t change what people think about you. I bet that once more people find out you’re awake, you’re going to get invited to a lot of fancy parties.”

  
  


Ral frowned.

“If I say no, will people leave me alone? If I’ve been out for two weeks, then I’m already way behind on my research.”

  
  


Jace shook his head, but he was still smiling.

“If you say no, that’ll probably paint you as some mysterious loner figure, and that will only catch people’s attention _more_.”

  
  


Ral groaned.

“Great. Just great. I’ve got one more question... Ravnica: it’s holding together, isn’t it? There aren’t any tentacles coming out of leylines, or anything like that?”

  
  


Jace looked away.

“Well, there aren’t any _tentacles_.”

  
  


“Okay,” said Ral, suddenly very worried, “then what _is_ there?”

  
  


Jace sighed.

“Nothing yet, but Nissa came to find me before she went home. She says that she thinks Emrakul is going to strip all of the color out of the mana. It doesn’t seem to be a problem yet, and I don’t think it will be for a little while, but I think she’s right.”

  
  


Ral stared down at his own hands. It could have been worse. It could have been so much worse.

But that didn’t mean he had to accept the consequences as they were.

  
  


“I guess I have my next subject of research, then, huh?”

  
  


Jace nodded.

“I’d like to help you with that, if… If you don’t mind.”

  
  


Ral looked up at him in shock. A thousand different responses swirled around in his head, but the one that came out of his mouth was, “That sounds nice.”

  
  


Jace smiled, but it faded into a more thoughtful look after a few seconds. The silence between them this time was thankfully more companionable than awkward.

  
  


Then Jace reached out and took Ral’s hand again.

“I’m glad that you’re okay Ral Zarek,” he said, seriously.

  
  


Ral could hear his heart hammering in his ears. He had both expected this and not anticipated it at all. He didn’t know what to do; his body had stopped responding to him, so he wound up staring Jace in the eyes. It was… Probably romantic?

  
  


Eventually, he got his arms to move and settled on putting a hand on Jace’s shoulder. He hadn’t  meant to pull Jace close, but he moved closer anyway.

  
  


He supposed he didn’t mind.

Ral tried to match Jace’s tone, but he was so nervous that he wasn’t able to stop the slight tremor in his voice.

“Well, I’m glad you’re okay, too.”

  
  


He wanted desperately to lean in and kiss Jace. Instead, he leaned down and pressed his face into Jace’s hair - at least he got the hug he had wanted.

  
  


Jace squeezed him tightly, and Ral’s breath caught in his throat. He didn’t know what he was doing. He _never_ didn’t know what he was doing, and now here he was, fresh out of death and floundering in uncharted waters. He couldn’t remember the last time he had hugged someone, much less wanted to… Fuck, he didn’t know, keep them safe?

  
  


After a moment, Jace pulled back and looked up at Ral. He was blushing, and Ral tried to ignore the flutter in his heart.

Then Jace asked, “Ral, is it alright if I kiss you?” and there was no way he was going to be able to ignore it any more.

  
  


“I thought I asked you not to read my mind.”

It came out sounding more confused than confident, but Jace smiled anyway as he leaned in.

  
  


Later, Ral Zarek would pull out a pen and some paper and leave a note for himself:

 _Save the world more often_. _Jace likes it, and you could use the help getting a second date._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that we reach the end... I hope you've all enjoyed this ride with me because it's certainly the longest thing I've ever written.
> 
> Also seriously go send your thanks so Snoot I don't think this would be readable without their help.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by my cool and good Pal A03 user Snoot, who doesn't know anything about Magic, but did an amazing job anyways.


End file.
